SECTR News – Pilot projects update and Collexis, a new on-line collaborator tool

SECTR News – Pilot projects update and Collexis, a new on-line collaborator tool

The SouthEastern Clinical and Translational Research Institute (SECTR)’s most recent call for pilot project applications received an overwhelming response, especially in the Young Investigators Category. SECTR received a total of 89 applications, ranging from projects ready to make the jump from innovative animal models to proof-of-concept studies in humans to translational dissemination of important research findings with clear public health significance into community settings. Project reviews should be completed in late April with awards starting May.

Also, the SECTR web portal now includes the Collexis Initiative, the first of many planned enhancements and investigator tools. When fully deployed, Collexis search tools will transform the dissemination of a wide array of clinical and translational research information to investigators and health professionals in both community settings and academic centers. The Collexis technology is a proprietary software program that pulls key concepts from publically available text sources, then uses controlled vocabularies and/or ontologies and conceptual maps (fingerprints) of structured and unstructured data to create expert profiles of people, departments and entire universities. It also enables researchers to quickly and accurately search databases (e.g., PubMed) to find domain specific information (e.g., stroke, cancer). With Health Sciences South Carolina support, this technology will be used to build a user-friendly, automatically updated database of information about and for the SECTR research community.

To use Collexis, visit the SECTR website at www.sectr.org. Please note that the Collexis Initiative is about 40% complete at present. New publications and investigator profiles are being added and enhanced continuously.

Source: CTSA/SECTR Program Office at MUSC, contact Randal Davis, davisra@musc.edu