The Neurocommons: Open Source Knowledge Management for Neuroscience
John Wilbanks
Science Commons
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
May 5, 2008 (Monday)
Beckman Behavioral Biology 24
The power of the Web makes it possible to share, use, and develop new tools that leverage existing knowledge to greater productivity. The Neurocommons project of the Science Commons http://sciencecommons.org grew out of the realization that while the Web provides significant opportunity to enhance the use of research results there are also particular needs different from the cultural web that have to be met.
Wilbanks will bring us up to date on the current status of data integration, text mining, and analytical tools being developed within the Neurocommons as a proof of concept of how Web technologies and renewed public domain sharing can improve uptake of new information in all applicable spheres of human endeavor.
http://sciencecommons.org/projects/data/nc_technical_overview
John Wilbanks comes to Creative Commons from a Fellowship at the World Wide Web Consortium in Semantic Web for Life Sciences. Previously, he founded and led to acquisition Incellico, a bioinformatics company that built semantic graph networks for use in pharmaceutical research & development. Before founding Incellico, John was the first Assistant Director at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. His first technology work was at fonix, where he researched human-computer interface and pattern recognition. He also worked in US politics as a legislative aide to U.S. Representative Fortney (Pete) Stark and a grassroots coordinator and fundraiser for the American Physical Therapy Association. John holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Tulane University and studied modern letters at the Universite de Paris IV (La Sorbonne). He is a research affiliate at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and can be found in the project MAC groupspace. He serves on the Advisory Board of the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central and the International Advisory Board of the Prix Ars Electronica’s Digital Communities awards.