CRDC 2024 Fall Symposium

The Cancer Research Data Commons (CRDC) 2024 Fall Symposium marked its 10th anniversary as an essential part of the NCI research data ecosystem. Two days of presentations and panel discussions provided an overview of accomplishments and a look ahead at exciting new initiatives.

Day 1: October 16, 2024
A collaborative session with the NCI’s Office of Data Sharing (ODS) Symposium kicked off the CRDC Symposium. This included a series of presentations by CRDC team members who traced the NCI data lifecycle and the role of the CRDC as an exemplar commons for NIH data sharing.

• Day 1 Recording (password: crdcfall2024)
   

Day 2: October 17, 2024
Keynote speaker Amanda Borens, a senior data science executive and a cancer patient, reminded all attendees that most of the data being shared through the CRDC was donated by patients, who likely will see no immediate benefit for themselves. She encouraged all attendees to remember their original commitment to careers in science and continue their research on behalf of patients like her.   

Featured speaker Warren Kibbe, Deputy Director of NCI Data Science & Strategy, noted that a great deal of work has been done to make the CRDC useful to the research community and that NCI must continue considering the user experience and the work of researchers—those who generate new data and those whose work is based on data reuse. 

Representatives of programs with which the CRDC collaborates discussed how the CRDC enables their work by ensuring that data adhere to NIH’s FAIR Principles—Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. Updates on AI data readiness, imaging de-identification, and the Data Enclave for aggregated secure data provided insights into important new initiatives. The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) provided an update on the Biomedical Data Fabric (BDF) Toolbox Program, which seeks to make sharing and accessing data easier, regardless of bioinformatics skill levels. Finally, a panel of partners across NCI offered thoughts on the past decade of progress as well as their future plans hosting NCI-sponsored data commons and repositories.  

• Day 2 Recording (password: crdcfall2024)