BRAIN Initiative: Data Archives for the BRAIN Initiative

Presenter

Ruben Alvarez, Ed.D.
Division of Data Science and Technology

Goal

This is a reissue of the informatics infrastructure program announcement for The Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative data ecosystem. This program has established domain-specific archives that serve as primary repositories for scientific data generated across the BRAIN research portfolio, providing long-term maintenance, standardized curation, compliance with NIH data management and sharing policy, and broad community access. This concept calls for continued support for the data archive component of that infrastructure. As before, the data archives teams will capture, store, and curate data related to BRAIN Initiative activities and work with the research community to incorporate tools that enable users to analyze and visualize the data.

Rationale

Since its launch in 2017, the BRAIN Initiative data archives program has funded eight domain-specific archives. These archives handle multiple data types including light microscopy, multi-omics, electron microscopy, X-ray microtomography, magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography, neurophysiological recordings, immunostaining, electroencephalogram, magnetoencephalography, electrocorticography, and most recently, multi-modal brain-behavior quantification data in humans and other animals. Several archives have successfully completed renewal cycles or will be poised to do so in the near future, demonstrating sustained productivity and ongoing community demand. Support of the data archive infrastructure is essential to maintain reproducible data pipelines, ensure ongoing data sharing compliance, preserve data quality and accessibility, and scale infrastructure to accommodate the exponential growth and increasing complexity of BRAIN data.

Continued support of the data archives for the BRAIN Initiative would:

  • collectively support thousands of datasets (nearly 14 petabytes currently) which are accessed and analyzed by a growing community of researchers,
  • safeguard prior investments by NIH,
  • sustain critical informatics infrastructure,
  • ensure the long-term accessibility and scientific impact of data generated through extensive BRAIN research,
  • drive effective replication and reproducibility of NIH-funded research,
  • advance research by supporting archives that use appropriate standards to summarize data,
  • support rigorous data sharing, analysis, and collaboration across sub-domains of BRAIN research while enabling future linkage into a broader data ecosystem.
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