The Brain Image Library: A Resource for Sharing Microscopy Data

About this Class

High-resolution, whole-brain microscopy provides unprecedented new insights into the brain’s structural organization, molecular diversity and connectivity. The Brain Image Library (BIL) provides infrastructure that facilitates the sharing of this valuable data, enabling investigators to comply with NIH data sharing requirements. This talk will describe the BIL, the data contributed, the resources provided, and the data sharing challenges faced as the focus towards human brain imaging contemplates the capture of petabyte sized cellular-scale data. Speaker: Alexander Ropelewski Mr. Ropelewski cultivated his 30+ year professional career at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center where he directs the Biomedical Applications Group, a group focused on enhancing the use of High-Performance Computing (HPC), Networking, and Data Science within the Biomedical Research Community. A computer scientist graduate from the University of Pittsburgh, Mr. Ropelewski’s HPC work includes the creation of parallel codes on a wide-range of computing architectures and major contributions to architectural frameworks for data-intensive projects. Ropelewski is currently PI and Operations Director for the BIL, an NIH funded national public resource enabling researchers to deposit, analyze, mine, share and interact with large brain image datasets. Other data intensive projects Mr. Ropelewski currently contributes to include the AUROA-US Breast Cancer Data Coordinating Center and the Infrastructure and Engagement component of the NIH HuBMAP project. In addition to those data intensive projects, Ropelewski co-directs the training and dissemination components of the National Center for Multiscale Modeling of Biological Systems. In the recent past, he led the PSC’s NIH funded MARC program, a multi-institutional collaborative bioinformatics training effort involving scientists and educators at several Minority Serving Institutions. The seminar is open to the public and registration is required each month.