We're thrilled to partner with Cohen Veterans Bioscience and the Center for Data Intensive Science at University of Chicago (CDIS) for the establishment of the Brain Commons. The Brain Commons is a cloud-hosted platform for big data essential for the understanding of brain conditions.

This data platform will aggregate and manage large-scale datasets from imaging, genomic, wearable, and clinical data sources. The Brain Commons will be hosted and operated by the OCC and the CDIS. OCC Chair and Director of the CDIS, Robert Grossman said, "We are thrilled to collaborate with a progressive organization like Cohen Veterans Bioscience to develop an entirely new way to bring together brain data from across the community. This has already been a powerful approach in cancer genomics, and we are excited to work with Dr. Haas and her team to see how data commons can improve data sharing and accelerate the pace of discovery for the brain disease search community."

Visit the the Brain Commons page to learn more. Find the full press release here.

We are very pleased to welcome Li Ko, PhD to the OCC team. Li will be serving as a project manager across all Center for Computational Science Research organizations (including OCC, Data Mining Group, and BloodPAC).

Li comes to us having completed a PhD in Biology at the University of Nebraska. Li is also a researcher with a diverse background in genetics, biochemistry, ecology, and behavioral biology. Her role at OCC will help us impact transformative change in data science by building, maintaining and governaning project-specific data commons and surrounding ecosystems.

We are very pleased to announce the availability of provisional data from the GOES-16 satellite in the OCC Environmental Data Commons (EDC). The data is made available as part of the NOAA Big Data Project (BDP).

The GOES-16 instrument suite includes three types of instruments: Earth sensing, solar imaging, and space environment measuring. The data is being made available in a NetCDF file format and are referenced in an angular system (x & y coordinates measure radians).

As part of the OCC EDC some initial tools are provided to jump start community use of the dataset. Initial tools include Docker images, Python notebooks and GDAL tools. We strongly welcome additional contributions to help ensure maximum utility of this valuable dataset. To get involved contact us at info@occ-data.org or add to the available repos on the OCC Github page.

This dataset is being generously hosted by The Research Computing Center (RCC) at the University of Chicago, an OCC Member.

Visit the GOES-16 Page on the EDC to learn more about how to get and work with the data. edc.occ-data.org/goes16/.

We need your help accelerating research and discovery! Awareness of the importance and utility of Data Commons is growing rapidly and our capacity needs to expand to match.

We are very pleased to be hiring a project manager. The position will work across each of the three sub-organizations in CCSR, a Chicago, IL based 501(c)3 nonprofit: the Open Commons Consortium (OCC), the Data Mining Group (DMG), and the BloodPAC Consortium (BloodPAC).

This is a unique chance to work in a cutting edge not-for-profit environment, supporting research and discovery in a wide variety of cross-disciplinary data science fields. A project manager for the three CCSR sub-organizations would have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to impact transformative change through data science, working with recognized leaders across multiple fields in a fast-paced learning environment.

Please review the full job description and apply by sending a resume and cover to jobs@ccsr-inc.org.

The podcast and video series Open SourceCraft featured a conversation between Gregg Pollack and OCC Director Dr. Robert Grossman on data commons and data sharing.

Learn more about subscribing to get the latest episodes here.