Development of Data Science Methods

National Institute Of Environmental Health Sciences

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

Work under this program stems from activities conducted by the Office of Data Science (ODS), led by Dr. Schmitt. In 2022-2023, ODS was focused on ongoing operational and administrative duties, including overseeing and supporting the management of research data for the NIEHS Division of Translational Toxicology, directing the Environmental Health Language Collaborative (EHLC), co-leading the development of a NIEHS strategic plan for advancing the environmental health data ecosystem, and starting a new project focused on building cyberinfrastructure to support health research on climate change and wildfires. As such, research was limited to the following activities: 1) The Environmental Health Language Collaborative (EHLC) is a recently formed program intended to provide an ongoing NIEHS commitment to advance the development and use of a common language for describing EH data and knowledge. Most of the work under EHLC has been programmatic, including contributing to three use case working groups that are still active, conduct of a 2023 workshop titled ''Sharing Your Environmental Health Sciences Data, and dissemination efforts including talks on modifying the Adverse Outcomes Pathway framework, improving metadata capture, supporting environmental research using the CANUE data platform, and encoding occupational history. EHLC has been active in several environmental health community workshops and conferences, and published a workshop report from a 2023 workshop focused on data sharing plans Holmgren2023. As part of the EHLC effort, Dr. Schmitt has been advising on the development of knowledge graphs, including helping extend the environmental conditions, treatments, and exposures ontology used in representing environmental health knowledge Chan2023. 2) This past year Dr. Schmitt continued to serve as a member of the NIEHS Personalized Environment and Genes Study executive management committee, helping to oversee research directions and activities primarily led by Dr. Allison Motsinger-Reif and Dr. Jan Hall. This effort has advanced new research into genetics by environment interactions, including Ayala-Ramirez2023, Lee2023. 3) This past year Dr. Schmitt and ODS have also contributed to the development of scientific tools and methods to support toxicoinformatics, including updating the ChemMaps system to exposure chemical space Borrel2023, to conduct toxicity read across Combs2023, and to evaluate zebrafish toxicity data Hsieh2023.