A lot of data had been produced in the biomedical sciences, and the US National Institute of Health has picked Philip Bourne, a professor and an associate vice chancellor of innovation and industry alliance at the University of California, San Diego, to head up an effort at the agency to make the best use of such big data. Bourne is to be the first associate director for data science at the agency.
"Phil will lead an NIH-wide priority initiative to take better advantage of the exponential growth of biomedical research datasets, which is an area of critical importance to biomedical research," NIH Director Francis Collins says in a statement. "The era of 'Big Data' has arrived, and it is vital that the NIH play a major role in coordinating access to and analysis of many different data types that make up this revolution in biological information."
Bourne is to join NIH early next year.