Biomedical Informatics Research Network

The Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) is a national initiative to assist biomedical research through data sharing and online collaboration. BIRN provides data-sharing infrastructure, software tools and techniques, and advisory services from a single source. The effort is funded by the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), a component of the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH).

BIRN is designed to serve the biomedical research community’s data-intensive sharing and analysis needs, which are particularly evident in fields such as biomedical imaging and genetics. All data transfer is designed to be consistent with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) privacy and security guidelines

BIRN's user-driven, software-based framework enables research teams to share significant quantities of data across geographic distance or incompatible computing systems. Participants may transfer data securely and privately. Groups may choose whether to share data with internal or external audiences.

BIRN also offers documented best practices, expert advice, and data-sharing, query and analysis software tools specific to biomedical research. Its researchers develop new data-sharing tools, authorization capability, and engineering tools to help biomedical researchers make sense of information in new ways.

BIRN is a collaborative effort between the NCRR and a nationwide leadership consortium: the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at the University of Southern California, the University of Chicago, Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of California at Irvine, and the University of California at Los Angeles.

Its interdisciplinary team consists of computer scientists, engineers, physicians, biomedical researchers and other technical experts, including grid computing developers Carl Kesselman of USC ISI, and Ian Foster of Argonne National Laboratories. Co-Principal Investigators are:

• Carl Kesselman, Ph.D., a professor in the University of Southern California (USC) Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and a Fellow of the Information Sciences Institute (ISI), its highest honor;
• Ian Foster, Ph.D., Director of the Computation Institute, a joint project between the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, and Associate Director of Argonne’s Mathematics and Computer Science Division;
• Steven G. Potkin, M.D., a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the University of California at Irvine (UCI) and Director of UCI’s Brain Imaging Center;
• Bruce R. Rosen, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School and Health Sciences and Technology at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, and Director of the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA;
• Jonathan C. Silverstein, M.D., Associate Director and senior fellow at the University of Chicago-Argonne National Laboratory Computation Institute, and an associate professor of Surgery, Radiology and Biological Sciences at UC;
• Arthur Toga, Ph.D., a professor in the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Department of Neurology, associate dean of the Geffen School of Medicine, and Director of the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging; and
• Liming Yang, Ph.D., a health scientist administrator for NCRR’s Biomedical Technology Division, where he manages a portfolio of grants on computational biology, software development and genetic studies.