The Steering Committee creates and implements tactical and operational initiatives for BIRN and its major constituencies. Members include Working Group chairs, key user group representatives, Community Service Award recipients, and an Executive Committee member – a cross-section designed to ensure BIRN serves all its audiences.
BIRN User Communities
Karl Helmer, Ph.D.
Structural Imaging Liaison
helmer at nmr.mgh.harvard.edu
Karl Helmer is an instructor in radiology at Harvard Medical School and an assistant in research in the Massachusetts General Hospital Radiology Department. He previously was project manager and a researcher for the Brain Morphometry BIRN. Helmer specializes in brain diffusion tensor imaging, and in design and optimization of multi-site magnetic resonance imaging trials. Within BIRN, he focuses on defining imaging domain user needs and manages new scientific community outreach.
David B. Keator, M.S.
Function BIRN, Chair, Derived Data Working Group
dbkeator at uci.edu
David B. Keator is director of scientific computing for the University of California at Irvine (UCI) Brain Imaging Center and the chair of the Function BIRN (FBIRN) neuroinformatics working group. He has extensive experience in medical imaging analysis and informatics methods. Keator’s current work includes large-scale data federations in neuroimaging and application of machine learning and probabilistic models to medical imaging data.
Jessica Turner, Ph.D.
Function BIRN
jturner at mrn.org
Jessica Turner is the former project manager for the Function BIRN testbed, headed by BIRN Principal Investigator Steven G. Potkin, Ph.D. She is an associate professor of translational neuroscience at the Mind Research Network, Albuquerque, NM, with a volunteer appointment at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico. Her primary research interests are in multivariate analyses of imaging data and in ontological representations of cognitive experiments.
Ivo Dinov, Ph.D.
LONI/UCLA, Co-chair, Genomics Working Group
ivo.dinov at loni.ucla.edu
Ivo Dinov is an associate professor of Statistics, Chief Operations Officer of the Center for Computational Biology, and a LONI faculty member at UCLA. His research is directed toward the development of advanced mathematical models for representation, statistical analysis and visualization of multi-dimensional and multimodal biomedical data.
Jason Steffener, Ph.D.
Cognitive Neuroscience Division/Columbia
js2746 at columbia.edu
Jason Steffener is an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at Columbia University with a background in biomedical engineering. He has extensive experience in signal processing and medical image analysis. His current work focuses on understanding the effects of healthy aging on the brain and the impact that age-related neural changes have on cognitive outcomes. These issues are addressed with multi-modal neuroimaging and multivariate statistics.
Collaborators
The Steering Committee also includes representatives from other major user groups.
Working Groups
José Luis Ambite, Ph.D.
Chair, Information Integration
ambite at isi.edu
José Luis Ambite is a project leader at the Information Sciences Institute and a research assistant professor in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Computer Science Department. An information integration expert, he leads data integration for three major ISI bioinformatics grants and for the clinically oriented Center for Health Informatics.
Rachana Ananthakrishnan, M.S.
Co-chair, Security
ranantha at mcs.anl.gov
Rachana Ananthakrishnan is a principal software development specialist at Argonne National Laboratory and a staff appointee at the Computation Institute at University of Chicago. She is also the Argonne Project Coordinator for the U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored Earth System Grid and is lead developer on many Globus Toolkit components. Ananthakrishnan works primarily in grid security and web services for secure distributed data access and resource sharing.
Gully A.P.C. Burns, Ph.D.
Chair, Knowledge Engineering
gully at usc.edu
Gully Burns is a project leader at Information Sciences Institute, where he focuses on pragmatic biomedical knowledge engineering systems that reduce information overload and enable scientists to use information more effectively. He is also the principal investigator for multiple federally funded grants, as well as a Research Assistant Professor of neurobiology at USC’s College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
Ann Chervenak, Ph.D.
Co-chair, Data Management
annc at isi.edu
Ann Chervenak is a project leader at Information Sciences Institute and a research assistant professor in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering‘s Computer Science Department. An expert in data management issues for large scientific collaborations, she leads research and development efforts in data and replication management. Chervenak is working with BIRN to define science use cases and provide data management capabilities for the user community.
Lee Liming
Co-chair, Operations
liming at mcs.anl.gov
Lee Liming is a technology analyst in the University of Chicago‘s Computation Institute and Argonne National Laboratory. A leader in the Globus open-source grid software community, his non-BIRN work currently includes National Science Foundation-sponsored high performance computing facilities, grid software development and scientific computing.
John-Paul Navarro
Co-chair, Operations
navarro at mcs.anl.gov
John-Paul Navarro works in the Mathematics and Computer Science Division of Argonne National Laboratory, and has a joint staff appointment in the University of Chicago‘s Computation Institute. His background includes business, academic, and scientific programming, databases, knowledge based systems, high- performance computing, and grid computing. His primary assignment is currently as area co-director for software integration in the National Science Foundation-sponsored TeraGrid project.
Laura Pearlman
Co-chair, Security
laura at isi.edu
Laura Pearlman is a computer scientist who focuses on grid computing security in the Medical Information Systems Division (MISD), based at the Information Sciences Institute. Pearlman’s work has included security and monitoring for the Globus Toolkit, and architecture and telecontrol services for the earthquake engineering NEESgrid.
Robert Schuler
Co-chair, Data Management
schuler at isi.edu
Robert Schuler is a systems programmer in the Medical Information Systems Division (MISD) of the Information Sciences Institute, where he develops software and tools for biomedical data management. His research interests include scalable wide-area replication and related services, data placement strategies, and novel scientific data management architectures. Schuler has worked in database federation, data modeling, data distribution workflows and secure document management for major corporations.
Fabio Macciardi, MD, Ph.D.
Chair, Genomics
fmacciar at uci.edu
More information coming soon.
Ravi Madduri
Chair, Workflow
madduri at mcs.anl.gov
Ravi K Madduri is a Project Manager in the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory and a research fellow at the Computation Institute at the University of Chicago. Ravi is one of three key contributors to the National Institutes of Health $100M Cancer Bio-Informatics Grid (caBIG), which links 60 NIH-funded cancer centers and clinical sites engaged in cancer research. Ravi is a lead architect on the scientific workflow design and implementation project under the caGrid toolkit.
Administration
Joseph Ames
Executive Director, BIRN
jdames at uci.edu
Joseph Ames has overall responsibility for tracking BIRN’s progress, addressing user needs, coordinating working groups and overseeing Community Service outreach. He coordinates the BIRN Executive Committee and chairs the Steering Committee. Ames has extensive private sector experience in communication, management and personnel issues, including managing creative people and developing efficient, focused and productive interdisciplinary teams. He has been Executive Director since 2005.
Cristina Williams
Web/wiki guru
cristina at isi.edu
Cristina Williams is ISI’s chief liaison for BIRN website and wiki operations. She oversees creation and implementation of BIRN online activities, including architecture, content and graphics, and a similar role with the Medical Information Systems Division at Information Sciences Institute. Williams has been web administrator for The Globus Alliance, whose Toolkit is the de facto grid computing standard. Her background is in technical writing for various industries.
