August 24, 2009

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - A team of researchers and information technology specialists at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Comprehensive Cancer Center has won the caBIG® 2009 Deployment Award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

The award honors the university's progress towards adopting the cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid®, or caBIG®. The project is a NCI-led, secure online resource of shared data and software used to improve and boost cancer-research collaboration. Today, more than 1,500 individuals from more than 450 research centers and organizations worldwide use caBIG and contribute to its projects.

"This team from the University of Alabama at Birmingham undertook a major initiative to adapt its existing data-entry system to work with caBIG tools and within the caBIG infrastructure," NCI officials said at an award ceremony in July in Washington, D.C. "The pioneering efforts of the team have resulted in a tremendous amount of institutional knowledge about the adaptation process. Moreover, the UAB team has embraced the caBIG vision and continues to share what they have learned with other disciplines."

The UAB deployment is a partnership between the Cancer Center, the UAB Center for Clinical and Translational Science, UAB Health System Information Services and the  UAB Information Technology High Performance Computing Services group. The team has been working for several years on caBIG implementation, access projects and expanding the sharing potential between the university and other U.S. cancer centers.

Those named in the UAB caBIG Deployment Award are Christie Bellah; Geoff Gordon, M.S.E.E.; Rajesh Pillai; Poornima Pochana; John-Paul Robinson; John Sandefur, M.B.A.; David Shealy, Ph.D.; and Matthew Wyatt, M.S.H.I.

About the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center

The UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center is the only one within a five-state region to have the NCI's comprehensive designation. The center is a leader in groundbreaking research, cancer prevention and community awareness, bioinformatics innovation and the team approach to cancer care.

About caBIG®

NCI has developed the caBIG initiative to speed research discoveries and improve patient outcomes by linking researchers, physicians, and patients throughout the cancer community. caBIG is a voluntary network of infrastructure, tools, and ideas that enables the collection, analysis, and sharing of data and knowledge along the entire research pathway from laboratory bench to patient bedside. The caBIG initiative is an essential resource to fulfill NCI's goal of eliminating suffering and death due to cancer. caBIG also serves as a catalyst for the rest of the larger biomedical community to more fully leverage the power of modern information technologies.