Tuesday, November 8, 2011

BioData at #SC11

Next week, Nov 12-18, Super Computing comes to Seattle. On Wed, Nov 15 at 12:15-1:15 pm, @finchtalk (me) will host a Birds-of-a-Feater session on "Technologies for Managing BioData" in room TCC305.

I'll kick off the session by sharing stories from Geospiza's work experiences and the work of others. If you have a story to share please bring it. The session will provide an open platform. We plan to cover relational databases, HDF5 technologies, and NoSQL. If you want to join in because you are interested in learning, the abstract below will give you an idea of what will be discussed.

Abstract:

DNA sequencing and related technologies are producing tremendous volumes of data. The raw data from these instruments needs to be reduced through alignment or assembly into forms that can be further processed to yield scientifically or clinically actionable information. The entire data workflow process requires multiple programs and information resources. Standard formats and software tools that meet high performance computing requirements are lacking, but technical approaches are emerging. In this BoF, options such as BAM, BioHDF, VCF and other formats, and corresponding tools, will be reviewed for their utility in meeting a broad set of requirements. The goal of the BoF is look beyond DNA sequencing and discuss the requirements for data management technologies that can integrate sequence data with data collected from other platforms such as quantitative PCR, mass spectrometry, and imaging systems. We will also explore the technical requirements for working with data from large numbers of samples.