BIRN maintains Working Groups in the research and operational areas that interest and benefit our partners most. These vibrant, active teams cross disciplines, institutions and geographies, and include BIRN internal experts and collaborators.
Working Groups also cooperate with each other to create solutions that span their respective areas of expertise. By applying BIRN’s current knowledge and other open-source developments to known issues or concerns, Working Groups help ensure that we create broadly applicable technologies, processes and insights – not just one-off answers to relatively narrow requirements.
Working Groups are open to collaborators interested in helping guide BIRN’s evolution, from specific enhancements to overall direction. They are:
Data Management WG
This working group is responsible for defining BIRN’s data management capabilities, such as data storage, access, and mirroring, along with metadata hosting. The Data WG’s members are computer scientists, software developers, system administrators and biomedical scientists representing participating biomedical research institutes and BIRN itself.
Derived Data WG
The difficulties of sharing and combining data across multiple sites become amplified after post-processing and/or data analysis. The Derived Data Working Group is focused on understanding, addressing and solving these difficulties.
Genomics WG
This working group aims to maximize BIRN’s capabilities for genetic research. We currently are defining a small number of genomics and genetics use cases, drawn from users such as the Function BIRN (FBIRN) testbed investigations, for proof-of-concept efforts.
Information Integration WG
This working group researches and develops technology to present a consistent, unified view of data that is distributed across multiple sources. Such ability is critical to BIRN’s infrastructure, which by definition enables participants to communicate across incompatible computing platforms and database structures.
Knowledge Engineering WG
This working group builds tools with a focus on helping scientists make sense of their data and knowledge. The team is working to provide generic, large-scale software systems and tools that readily can be adapted the needs of any biomedical research domain.
Operations WG
This working group oversees the processes and practices for operating the BIRN system, including services provided by BIRN itself, by BIRN user teams, and by third-party service providers. We focus on three areas: assisting BIRN service providers with operational issues, establishing community-wide BIRN operational standards, and prioritizing known system issues. We also help the BIRN Steering Committee identify potential user needs based on reported operational experiences.
Security WG
This working group is charged with creating security requirements and providing solutions for the BIRN community. We offer an open forum, including regular teleconferences and a mailing list, for community members to discuss security requirements, propose and evaluate solutions, and raise issues or concerns.
Workflow WG
This working group designs, supports, validates and shares BIRN’s capabilities for computationally efficient, portable and graphical workflows representing advanced computational data analysis protocols. There are a number of use cases which can be elegantly solved using pipeline workflows. These include brain mapping and computational neuroscience, biomedical imaging, informatics and genetic protocols.
