The Ferryman

OpenTox USA 2015

I am pleased to announce the program for the OpenTox USA 2015 meeting which will take place 10-12 Feburary at Johns Hopkins, Baltimore.

The goal of the meeting is to discuss and develop important components for driving 21st century approaches to safety assessment forward. We assume that collaboration driven by an open global platform and open standards will be a key success factor. Integrating heterogenous evidence supported by a common knowledge framework and ecosystem of tools and partners will enable practical application, judgements and decisions including industrial application and regulatory acceptance.

The program will involve conference sessions and associated hands-on workshops, poster session and knowledge cafes.

The main themes of the meeting are:

Data Science, facilitated by Barry Hardy (Douglas Connect)
Adverse Outcome Pathways, facilitated by Stephen Edwards (US EPA)
Exposure Modelling, facilitated by Tim Pastoor (Syngenta)
Integrating Evidence and Analysis, Thomas Hartung (Johns Hopkins)
Risk Assessment & Management Applications, Grace Patlewicz (Du Pont)

We are open for submission of abstracts for consideration for the program.

Further information on the program can be found at
http://www.opentox.com/events/opentox-usa-2015

On behalf of the OpenTox Community and the Organising Committee.

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Womenware

I have been fortunate to have had numerous interesting and engaging conversations with Dana Winner during our recent work together in the Middle East. I anticipate an interesting and stimulating read in her new book just out called "Womenware". See http://www.amazon.com/Hardware-Software-Womenware-ebook/dp/B005NW1WVG/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1316365083&sr=1-1 for details on the Kindle version. I have just been able to download a version to a reader on my laptop. Now I just need some more reflective space and reading time!

Collaborative development of predictive toxicology applications

The following initial paper on OpenTox has now been published and is available in preliminary form:

Collaborative development of predictive toxicology applications
Barry Hardy, Nicki Douglas, Christoph Helma, Micha Rautenberg, Nina Jeliazkova, Vedrin Jeliazkov, Ivelina Nikolova, Romualdo Benigni, Olga Tcheremenskaia, Stefan Kramer, Tobias Girschick, Fabian Buchwald, Joerg Wicker, Andreas Karwath, Martin Gutlein, Andreas Maunz, Haralambos Sarimveis, Georgia Melagraki, Antreas Afantitis, Pantelis Sopasakis, David Gallagher, Vladimir Poroikov, Dmitry Filimonov, Alexey Zakharov, Alexey Lagunin, Tatyana Gloriozova, Sergey Novikov, Natalia Skvortsova, Dmitry Druzhilovsky, Sunil Chawla, Indira Ghosh, Surajit Ray, Hitesh Patel and Sylvia Escher
Journal of Cheminformatics 2010, 2:7 (31 August 2010)
http://www.jcheminf.com/content/2/1/7

Please feel free to circulate in the community and to your contacts who might be interested. Thanks!

And a special thanks to all who have contributed to advancing this work, including our advisors, and growing community of friends, interactions and partners!

Barry 

OpenTox Workshop in Potsdam to discuss collaborative approach to linking resources to improve human safety

On Sunday May 30 we host an OpenTox Workshop near Berlin in Potsdam that will bring many leading international research program directors and leaders together to discuss how collaboration and the increased linking of resources over the World Wide Web could progress human safety research and safety assessment.  By linking resources and data increasingly powerful computer-based models can be built for predicting and avoiding unwanted adverse toxic side effects of drugs, chemicals, ingredients in soaps and cosmetics, pesticides etc. thus enhancing human safety and protecting the environment better.  Such methods should also eventually lead to the replacement of many animal experiments.

More details on program can be located at:

http://www.opentox.org/data/blogentries/public/opentoxworkshoppotsdam2010

Program for Advances in Innovation and Knowledge Management in Research & Product Development

I provide here the final program for our InnovationWell workshop on Innovation and Knowledge Management in Research & Product Development which will take place 5-7 July 2006 at Oxford University, Oxford, UK.   We will be examining and discussing methods and best practices for accelerating innovation, integrating knowledge, communicating understanding and supporting decision making in industry research and product development.  We should have a series of stimulating workshops and facilitated conversations on the varied ingredients required for a successful R&D innovation recipe covering strategic planning, supporting collaboration, managing intellectual property, effectively planning and managing electronic laboratory notebook systems, using ontologies for knowledge discovery, subjecting R&D to continuous assessment and improvement, and integrating best practices from the fields of innovation management, knowledge management and complex systems to improve productivity.  It should be a knowledge-enriching 3 days with many ideas for participants to bring away.

You can download a copy of the Program Brochure as a pdf here:

Download innovationwellrd_oxford_web1.PDF

For  further information and questions on these workshops and registration, please contact: Barry Hardy,  eMail: barry.hardy [at] douglasconnect.com, Tel: +41 61 851 0170

A complete workshop summary is contained in the remainder of this post:

Launching this Blog

Why the Ferryman name?

If you have ever been to Basel in Switzerland you may have taken a ferry across the Rhine between the main city and “Klein Basel” (Little Basel). This ferry is tethered to a cable line stretching across the river and uses only the river’s current to be pushed quietly from one side to the other. Here I imagine sitting with the river’s flow of information swirling past, reflecting on the voices that have spoken to me that day. Here we can also sit together and share a conversation as we observe the constant and changing flow around us.

And so this Blog has been taken to the river.

“You will learn it,” said the Ferryman Vasudeva, “but not from me. The river has taught me to listen; you will learn from it too…And it sometimes happened that while listening to the river, they both thought the same thoughts, perhaps of a conversation of the previous day, or about one of the travellers whose fate and circumstances occupied their minds, or death, or their childhood; and when the river told them something good at the same moment, they looked at each other, both thinking the same thought, both happy at the same answer to the same question.”

Herman Hesse