Re: ICBO conference article -

Yes, it does do a good job of explaining things.  It could go a long way
toward developing a lead article for Science magazine.

 - Bob Futrelle

On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 7:00 PM, Joanne Luciano <jluciano@cs.rpi.edu> wrote:

> Nice job of explaining what the bio-ontology work is and why it is
> important.
>
> http://www.buffalo.edu/news/12675
>
> NEWS RELEASE
> For the Sake of Research and Patient Care, Scientists Must Find Common
> LanguageBiomedical ontology conference shows how philosophers are helping
> this massive endeavor
> Release Date: June 27, 2011
> BUFFALO, N.Y. -- In July, hundreds of international scientists from dozens
> of biomedical fields will meet at the University at Buffalo seeking a common
> language with which to energize cross-disciplinary research.
> The International Conference on Biomedical Ontology will take place July
> 26-30, and conference convener Barry Smith, PhD, says attendees have a
> common goal: to enable all of the data produced by the entire spectrum of
> life sciences to be easily retrieved and understood by those working in all
> biomedical fields, from the molecular to the global scale.
> "It is a huge order," he says, "little understood by the general public and
> difficult to achieve, but absolutely necessary for the continued development
> of biomedical science. It promises benefits in some ways similar to those
> brought to physics by the standardization of units of measure in the 18th
> century."
> The goal is so important, that Smith, an internationally-recognized medical
> ontologist, Julian Park Chair and SUNY Distinguished Professor of Philosophy
> at UB, has devoted his professional life to this endeavor.
> The public may assume that when biomedical scientists talk, they use the
> same words to mean the same things. But as Smith points out, in different
> research fields, even such common terms as "pain," "gene," "blood" and
> "cancer" may have very different meanings as used in different contexts.
> With the exponential growth of biomedical data, this simple fact has
> enormous implications. It leads to incompatibilities that frequently
> confuse, halt cross-disciplinary research and severely limit communication
> among researchers.
> "In order to advance science," he says, "it is crucial to successful
> biomedical research that researchers in various disciplines, from molecular
> biology to public health, who write in different languages and use discrete
> reporting schemes, accurately translate terms used by all systems in which
> they operate.
> "Otherwise, meaning is lost. Information pertaining to research results
> cannot be found, in ways which can have devastating consequences to medical
> research," Smith says.
> "Shared ontologies, which are agreed-upon systems of meaning are designed
> to prevent this from happening, to enhance knowledge among systems that
> could not otherwise talk to each other," he says.
> "We not only need to develop and populate ontologies," Smith says, "but
> encode shared definitions in a way that enables computer programs to use
> them, and then promulgate our results to researchers throughout the world so
> that they understand this new knowledge and have functional access to it."
> To these ends, this conference is one of a series initiated in 2009 to
> offer a forum for representatives of all major communities involved in the
> development and application of biomedical and related ontologies.
> In addition to many scientific presentations, the conference will offer
> poster sessions, tutorials, workshops, and demonstrations of new software
> critical to translational research.
> Among the issues under discussion this year will be techniques and
> technologies for collaborative ontology development, reasoning with
> biomedical ontologies, the evaluation of biomedical ontologies and how
> biomedical ontologies interact with the Semantic Web (i.e., the "web of
> data" that enables machines to understand the semantics, or meaning, of
> information on the World Wide Web).
> Smith says presenters will consider these issues in connection with gene
> and cell research, biomedical imaging, biochemistry and drug discovery,
> biomedical investigations, experimentation, clinical trials, clinical and
> translational research, and development and anatomy
> Keynote speakers will be Bernard de Bono, MD, PhD, of the European
> Bioinformatics Institute, and Roberto Rocha, MD, PhD, senior corporate
> manager for knowledge management and clinical decision support in the
> Clinical Informatics Research and Development (CIRD) group of Partners
> Healthcare and Harvard School of Medicine.
> De Bono's talk on the "Virtual Physiological Human Project," will address
> efforts to bring together physiology and pharmacology modelers to develop
> uniform representation for anatomical structure and function by increasing
> the interoperability of clinical systems.
> Rocha's talk, "Practical Applications of Ontologies in Clinical Systems,"
> will address his work with Partners Healthcare and at the University of Utah
> (2000-08), where he led the design and implementation of a distributed data
> and knowledge management infrastructure to support clinical and
> translational research.
> UB presenters include Werner Ceusters, MD, professor of psychiatry, UB
> School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, and principal investigator on a
> new National Institutes of Health grant focused on an ontology for pain and
> related disability, mental health and quality of life. He will present a
> tutorial at the conference to illustrate how this developing ontology can
> help patients with chronic pain clearly and accurately express how they feel
> to the doctors and healthcare providers trying to understand and treat them.
> Other UB presenters include, in addition to Smith, Alex Diehl of the
> Department of Neurology, Randall Dipert of the Department of Philosophy,
> Patrice Seyed of Computer Science, and Alan Ruttenberg of the School of
> Dental Medicine.
> Further information, including the program and a list of the 150
> participants registered thus far, can be found at http://icbo.buffalo.edu.
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Joanne S. Luciano, PhD                            Rensselaer Polytechnic
> Institute
> Research Associate Professor                 110 8th Street, Winslow 2143
> Tetherless World Constellation                Troy, NY 12180, USA
> Department of Computer Science            Email: jluciano@cs.rpi.edu
> Office Tel. +1.518.276.4939                         Global Tel.
> +1.617.440.4364 (skypeIn)
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>