By Matthew Dublin
Big Blue has announced a new effort to help researchers secure funding, identify collaborators across the globe, and locate the most recent findings in their respective fields using social networking. The effort, which is headed up by IBM and the University of Rhode Island's College of Pharmacy aims to apply IBM's data analytics technology, including the IBM Content Analytics software, cloud computing, and social networking, to develop a Facebook-like solution that can help institutions manage projects within budget and achieve their objectives.
Under the collaboration, the IBM and URI teams are working to apply IBM's data analytics technologies, cloud computing, and a patented IBM technology to develop a social media application that will provide researchers with individual profile pages that can connect to other researcher's profiles with similar interests. The platform will "crawl" across the network to recommend potential collaborators, provide data on grants, journal publications, and other information.
"This IBM-URI College of Pharmacy project holds promise for accelerating the process of locating research support opportunities, forming winning research teams and efficiently collaborating in the creation of research funding proposals," said Ronald Jordan, dean of URI's College of Pharmacy in a statement. "The rate of change we are experiencing in scientific discovery and processes, which support academic research, is exponential. This technology gives us the opportunity to not only keep pace, but potentially further advance it, to the advantage of the University and our state."
