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GEORGETOWN RESEARCHER WINS caBIG DEVELOPMENT AWARD

by Yuse Lajiminmuhip

Baris Suzek, MS, a research instructor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular & Cellular Biology, received the Outstanding Achievement Award at this year’s Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) Convention. His leading role in project management, tool development, and collaboration to perfect the standards for caBIG were the traits cited when he received this award. In fact, Baris received two more honors for team contributions to the overall project, including the Change Agent and Delivering Results awards, an indication of his dedication across the board.

Tasked with linking cancer researchers together, caBIG is often called the “world wide web” for cancer research. The program, developed by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), aims to eliminate the gaps that come from the variety of research methods used by scientists at different institutions. By creating a universal standard for information management, anyone will be able to use and interpret the data without specialty assistance. This is a huge advantage to cancer researchers where time translates into money.

Furthermore, this program allows the sharing of data between researchers in an “open source” environment. This promotes access to research data from around the country – enabling investigators to collaborate in shared virtual workspaces.

A native of Turkey, Baris moved to the United States to complete his masters in computer science at Johns Hopkins University. He joined the Georgetown community in 2001 when he became part of Protein Information Resource (PIR). He is the Bioinformatics Associate Team Lead for PIR. In 2004, he became part of the Georgetown team that works on caBIG. Specifically, he began working to create a program with a defined set of standards that allows interoperability between institutions that deal with similar data.  In just a year, Baris and his team created the “silver standard” prototype, the first program standard that held definitive requirements for new institutions introducing their data to the community. The silver standard provided information models describing the system with controlled vocabulary serving as a legend, and restrictive data sets to ensure a unified system.  In essence, Baris describes the many rules as “analogous to pull down menus – allowing only the selection of certain options.”

To Baris, this very technical and complex process of creating a ‘universal language’ for cancer researchers became a personal passion. He described his motivation as, “Translating bench side research to the bed side.” In addition to working on the program itself, Baris assists individuals by training them to use the newly developed programs and modules.  Robert Clarke, PhD, DSc, the lead caBIG researcher at Georgetown, calls Baris’ leadership, “A key resource to caBIG researchers.”

A strong believer in the mission statement of caBIG, Baris’ contribution to the fight against cancer has been to compile all the data available. Many of the tools, he said, are accessible – researchers just have to know about them. Baris hopes to one day see the results of his hard work in the form of a “gold standard” for data storage. A step above his recent accomplishments, the gold standard will be the perfect integration of his silver standard protocol at every participating institution. He calls this the future, but thanks to his dedication, the future may not be so far away.

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