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Washington U. helps develop science-based social networking site
(by Julia Werner - December 09, 2009)
Science has taken notice of the social networking phenomenon and plans to experiment.
Washington University School of Medicine is one of the seven institutions contributing to a new national network for sharing information between scientists.
“One of the major problems in biomedical research is the fact that human disease is incredibly complex,” said Dr. Rakesh Nagarajan, associate professor of pathology and immunology at WUSM. “Research is really being slowed down from people not being able to find each other, and people not being able to find resources.”
Though the project is being touted as “Facebook for scientists,” Nagarajan explained that it works somewhat differently than the popular social networking site.
“The ultimate intent of any networking is to connect people. In that way this is also networking, but the real intent is to promote research collaborations that will speed scientific discovery,” he said.
The profiles on this network will not contain a lot of detailed, personal information that is regularly updated by the user, but instead will draw relevant information from sources like university departmental systems and databases like PubMed that contain published scientific papers.
The goal is for the software to eventually be able to update itself when new information is available from these sources without constant attention from the user.
“We don’t necessarily want to spend our entire day managing our own profile,” Nagarajan said. “It’s a waste of our time, we’d rather do research.”
Scientists can search for a particular methodology, disease or other field of study and find experts who are tagged with that information.
“There is a set of visualization tools you can generate from the searches you do that will connect people with diseases, people to technique, people to people,” Nagarajan said.
While other universities have developed similar networking methods, the flow of information has remained outgoing; other institutions can access certain information, but not contribute.
This new project strives to go beyond a single institution and connect users across the country and eventually across the world. WUSM is part of the team implementing and evaluating new software that is compatible with different universities.
“This is the first project of its kind where it is a concerted effort and a funded effort to promote research networking using a tool, first within the university and then across a set of institutions,” Nagarajan said.
Unlike other research networks, the objective is not only to publish information, but also to provide an outlet for scientists to find the counterpart to their research and collaborate.
“Everyone can’t be an expert at everything,” Nagarajan said. “There are pockets of expertise and now how you go about finding complementary expertise to yourself in helping solve a complex problem is not trivial.”
The University of Florida is leading the project, and other contributors include Indiana University and Cornell University, the latter of which developed VIVO, the research networking software that the project is building from.
The network is scheduled to launch in phases. The first step is to be operational in one or more WUSM departments with limited sources (hopefully by spring 2010). The next phase will incorporate the entire WUSM, and the two-year goal is to connect all seven of the participating universities.
The project was made possible with a $12.2 million grant from the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR). The funding was provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 that aimed, in part, to increase medical research.
“It’s a different way of thinking for researchers,” Nagarajan said. “We’re more used to calling the person we know on the phone or e-mailing them and saying, ‘Hey, I know you work on this, do you want to work together?’ It’s eventually going to be a core infrastructure, but it’s going to take time to catch on.”
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