Demonstrating Cloud Computing Capabilities Using NDAR, Piplines and the Autism Informatics Grid

Friday, May 18, 2012
Sheraton Hall (Sheraton Centre Toronto)
10:00 AM
D. Hall1, R. Stoner2, B. Koser3, S. Novikova4, M. McAuliffe5 and G. F. Farber6, (1)National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Bethesda, MD, (2)Neurosciences and UCSD Autism Center of Excellence, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, (3)National Institute of Mental Health, Rockville, MD, (4)The Office of Technology Development and Coordination , NIMH, Rockville, MD, (5)CIT, NIH Center for Information Technology, Bethesda, MD, (6)Office of Technology Development and Coordination, National Institute of Mental Health, Rockville, MD
Background:  The scientific community, through the National Database for Autism Research (NDAR) has harmonized and shared genomic, clinical, and imaging data on over 22,000 research participants, with many thousands more expected annually.

Objectives:  We present a new model of data processing using commercially available cyberinfrastructure (e.g. cloud computing) to carry out high performance computing workflows against curated data sets within NDAR.

Methods:  During the session, we will demonstrate the use of the autism informatics grid, now established, to access and process large volumes of data using generally available processing pipelines. 

Results:  Discussion of the steps to set up and automate a pipeline, the benefits of this approach over more traditional computational techniques, its cost, and any barriers encountered will be provided.

Conclusions:  Cloud computing infrastructure and very large datasets, both readily available to the autism research community, provide unprecedented opportunities for discovery.  By demonstrating these capabilities in real time, we will outline the framework needed for the research community to adopt similar methods in helping to accelerate scientific discovery. 

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