Bourne Will Lead NIH Big Data Effort

NIH has chosen Philip E. Bourne, a computational biologist and open access advocate, to be its first associate director for data science. Bourne is the associate vice chancellor for the Division of Innovation & Industry Alliances and a professor in the department of pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego. As NIH’s “big data” chief, Bourne will lead an NIH-wide effort to coordinate access to and analysis of different types of biological data. Bourne, who was trained as a physical chemist, is interested in the application of algorithms, text mining, machine learning, metalanguages, biological databases, and visualization to solve problems in biomedical science. He is also a strong proponent of the free dissemination of scientific data and knowledge. Bourne is expected to join NIH in early 2014.