On June 24, 2015, PROTECT Core D Leader David Kaeli, Ph.D., presented his work during the NIEHS SRP webinar Integrating Data from Multidisciplinary Research, Session I: Introducing the Big Picture, hosted by the EPA. The focus of the webinar was to present the concept of big data in the context of environmental health sciences and explore projects where integrated datasets are being utilized to solve complicated problems.
William Suk, Ph.D., Director of the Superfund Research Program, opened the presentation by describing data diversity within the SRP and the prospect of using integrated datasets to expand environmental health understanding, and reduction of hazardous exposures. Allen Dearry, Ph.D., director of the Office of Scientific Information Management at NIEHS, followed with a discussion on the availability and access to technology which is increasingly expanding, and the problems that working with this data may present. Next, Steven DiMarco, Ph.D., Professor of Oceanography and Ocean Observing Lead at Texas A&M University, shared his work and the impact of rapidly increasing global data on understanding the ocean’s effect on human health, prevention, and preparation. David Kaeli, Ph.D., rounded out the presentation by describing his team’s work in PROTECT to collect, clean, secure, maintain and analyze data to identify links between contaminants and pre-term birth in northern Puerto Rico.
Overall it was a great collaborative event that gave the audience an engaging initiation to the large impact that big data is beginning to have in environmental health sciences. For more information and to download slides from this presentation please visit the webinar’s site.