COLLOQUIUM Department of Computer Science and Engineering University of South Carolina Ontology-driven Data Integration in Biomedicine GQ Zhang Case Western Reserve University Date: October 9, 2012 Time: 1430-1530 (2:30pm-3:30pm) Place: Swearingen 3A75 Abstract We present an ontology-driven data integration environment called PhysioMIMI (Multi-modality, Multi-resource Information Integration Environment for Physiological and Clinical Research) and illustrate a variety of application scenarios of this environment. PhysioMIMI uses a federated data management approach with a domain ontology as the semantic infrastructure driving data integration, query interface design, and data harmonization across clinical studies. The front-end of PhysioMIMI is a reusable and user-friendly query interface called VISAGE (Visual Aggregator and Explorer). The backend of PhysioMIMI uses an ontology-driven Map and Connect approach, in contrast to the traditional ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) process used in a data warehouse approach. The Map and Connect paradigm embodies flexibility for accommodating data quality improvements in source data by pushing data curation tasks upstream in a source-specific, decentralized way, so that updates can be managed distributively throughout the data reuse life-cycle. Dr. GQ Zhang is Professor of Computer Science and Division Chief of Medical Informatics at Case Western Reserve University's Engineering School and Medical School, respectively. He serves as a Director of Biomedical Informatics Core for CTSC, a member of the Consortium of Clinical Translational Science Award of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, Associate Director of Case Comprehensive Cancer Center, Professor of Proteomics and Bioinformatics and Professor in the Center for Clinical Investigation. His research interests spans Data Management in Biomedicine, Biomedical Ontologies and Applications, Ontology Quality Assurance, Clinical Research Informatics, and Theoretical Computer Science. Dr. Zhang has served on numerous panels, editorial boards and programming committees. He is the author of over 120 publications ranging from automata theory, domain theory, ontology, imaging, to clinical research informatics.