What We Do

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John Otridge, Ph.D. Director, Center for Technical Operations Support

Center for Technical Operations Support Group

Overview

The Center for Technical Operations Support Group provides software development, project budgeting, and product acquisition support for the National Cancer Institute’s Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology. 

We believe the proliferation of scientific data can be leveraged to the advantage of researchers across the world if they have the tools and platforms necessary for effective data exploration, discovery, analysis, and data sharing.  

Following FAIR principles for data sharing (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) the group provides data science support for many National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute organizations.  

We partnered with the National Cancer Institute Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology (CBIIT) to develop the Cancer Research Data Commons platform and its core data sharing platform. We also contributed in the early stages of the Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice (NCI-MATCH) program.  

  For many years, the group has been a collaborator in the development and support of projects including: 

Focus

Software system development 

  • Develop biomedical informatics software products and data sharing platforms. 
  • Structure, harmonize, and maintain data and metadata consistency, integrity, and availability. 
  • Implement the Pediatric Cancer Data Ecosystem, an open targets platform dedicated to pediatric pre-clinical data. 
  • Built the BENTO Framework, which is a state-of-the-art, cloud-based, micro-services platform developed with FAIR principles, to support the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Research Data Commons. 
  • Established the NCI Integrated Canine Data Commons, which is a cloud-based solution to further research on cancers by enabling comparative analysis with canine cancer. 
  • Developed the NCI Serological Sciences Network data management system. 
  • Designed and developed the NCI Cancer Trials Reporting Platform, a comprehensive cancer trials reporting system supporting over 60 National Cancer Institute Cancer Centers of Excellence and providing open access to the public on available cancer trials across the country. 

Technical and scientific project management 

  • Participate in the National Cancer Informatics Program. 
  • Support the definition of scope, time, and budget for information technology activities. 
  • Review and assess information technology resources from all subcontract activities. 
  • Provide project management for technical and scientific projects and financial management. 

Semantic operations and software 

  • Provide project management, development and programmatic support for the Enterprise Vocabulary Services, including: 
    • EVS Editing Software 
    • EVS Terminology Server 
    • EVS Browser, Reporting, Request, and Specialized Software 

Websites and scientific web applications 

  • Develop event registry platforms. 
  • Develop and manage of Drupal-based content management sites. 
  • Develop and maintain web presence for National Cancer Institute platforms. 

Imaging and informatics for precision medicine 

  • Provide programmatic support for the National Biomedical Imaging Archive. 
  • Support interoperability between images and genomic data, including standards such as BRIDG, CDISC, and DICOM. 
  • Support the use of the Medici Challenge Management System for image analysis algorithm development and validation. 

Technology

Cloud-based technologies 

  • AWS RDMS 

  • AWS Lambda 

  • AWS Elastic Search 

  • AWS EC2 

  • AWS ECS 

  • Route 52 

  • AWS Load-balancing 

Database technologies 

  • Neo4j Graph DB 

  • RDMS 

  • MySQL 

  • PostgreSQL 

DevOps technologies 

  • Jenkins 

  • Git 

  • Docker 

  • Ansible 

NCI cloud resources