Indiana University
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Project: UITS Advanced IT Core (AITC)

Primary UITS contact: William K. Barnett, Senior Manager for Life Sciences (Email William Barnett)

Last update: May 5, 2009

Description: The UITS Advanced Information Technology Core (AITC; established as the INGEN Advanced IT Core in 2001) is an IU School of Medicine (IUSM) service core based in the Research Technologies (RT) division of UITS. The goal of this core is to act as a gateway for the IUSM to the broad array of RT resources and services such as supercomputing, data management, visualization, bioinformatics, statistical analysis, grid computing, and other advanced technologies available from UITS. A secondary goal is to partner closely with health care and related sciences researchers to develop innovative technology services that can advance research programs and collaborations.

The UITS AITC both complements and supplements IUSM's Information Services and Technology Management (ISTM) office (which is responsible for desktop computing environments, networking, IUSM operational and administrative computing applications, and IUSM IT security), the IUSM Biostatistics Core (which assists researchers with statistical techniques in biostatistics and bioinformatics, data management, and data integration), and the IUSM Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Core (which provides bioinformatics tools, data management, web site design, and data hosting).

Outcome and benefits: The intended outcome of the AITC is to improve the practice and outcomes of medical research in Indiana through the use of advanced technologies.

Recently completed project: The Information Protection for Privacy and Security (IPPS) project, aimed at improving the risk posture of RT systems to make them HIPAA compliant, so that IU health care and related sciences researchers can use them to store and analyze electronic protected health information (ePHI) and other sensitive data for private sector applications.

New projects: The UITS AITC and RT are now involved in a number of projects with the IU health care community:

  • Drug discovery research by Dr. Samy Meroueh (Department of Biochemistry and the Center for Computational Biology & Bioinformatics), speeding up computing by two orders of magnitude (a factor of 100) by moving his compute-intensive pharmacokinetic molecular docking and dynamics screening from a small, in-house system to IU's Big Red supercomputer. This has accelerated the ability to identify potential biochemical compounds that target cancer cells to an unprecedented rate, expanding significantly Dr. Meroueh's ability to identify cancer therapy agents.
  • The Indiana Center for Excellence in Biomedical Imaging (associated with the IUSM Department of Radiology) is migrating data processing and storage workflow to the Quarry supercomputer at UITS. This has resulted in 50 times faster post-acquisition radio-image processing of 3D PET scan volumes from the lab, which allows the Imaging Core to significantly improve turnaround time.
  • The development of the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (CTSI) web site (http://www.indianactsi.org/), which will provide Core services and grant applications online, and act to facilitate translational research programs. This site aspires to serve the translational needs of basic and clinical researchers, practitioners, the public, and tech transfer communities.
  • The National Gene Vector Biorepository and Coordination Center (NGVBCC), a project led by Dr. Ken Cornetta in the Dept. of Medical and Molecular Biology/Microbiology and Immunology for which the RT Biomedical Applications Group is playing the role of the Informatics Core.

Ongoing projects:

  • Tatiana Foroud (Medical and Molecular Genetics): 3D scanning and software support for the Collaborative Initiative on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (CIFASD) facial imaging project
  • Howard Edenberg (Director, Center for Medical Genetics): Development and data support for the Centralized Life Sciences Data (CLSD) service, support for Oracle databases
  • Ken Cornetta (Medical and Molecular Genetics): Support for toxicology database and web site for National Gene Vector Laboratory (NGVL)
  • Jacqueline Gray (Medical and Molecular Genetics): Rewrite of Pedigree visualization and printing software for databases on Huntington's and other genetic diseases
  • T.K. Li (NIH/NIAAA, formerly IUSM), Ed Riley (UCSD): Leadership of CIFASD Informatics Core, development of data dictionaries and database infrastructure
  • Vadim Moskvin, Lech Papiez (Radiation Oncology): Parallelization of PENELOPE radiation transport code for Gamma Knife treatment planning

Project sponsor: Craig Stewart, Associate Dean for Research Technologies

Project team:

  • William K. Barnett, Core director
  • Anurag Shankar, Core project analyst and liaison
  • Andy Arenson, Manager, Biomedical Applications
  • Michael Grobe, Biomedical Applications
  • Michel Tavares, Biomedical Applications
  • Helen Yezerets, Biomedical Applications
  • Jim Mullen, Biomedical Applications
  • Keith Lehigh, RT Core Services
  • Joe Rinkovsky, RT Core Services
  • Kurt Seiffert, Manager, Research Storage
  • Chris Garrison, Research Storage
  • Jeff Rogers, Advanced Visualization Lab
  • Dave Hancock, Manager, High Performance Systems
  • Stephanie Burks, High Performance Systems
  • Nancy Long, High Performance Systems
  • Robert Henschel, High Performance Applications
  • Ray Sheppard, High Performance Applications
  • Huian Li, High Performance Applications

Additional information:

  • Funding agency: Lilly Endowment, Inc.
  • Grant dates: December 2000-December 2008
  • Funding to UITS: $6.7 million
  • Total funding to IU: $105 million (phase 1) plus $50 million (phase 2)