MiCM News
June 2020
ResearchMatch brings life and data sciences researchers togetherNow in its second year, the McGill initiative in Computational Medicine’s matching program has announced a new batch of partnerships
By Gillian Woodford
ResearchMatch, a program of the McGill initiative in Computational Medicine (MiCM) that connects life sciences researchers with colleagues in data sciences, recently celebrated its first birthday and announced eight new projects to be funded as part of its second iteration, in conjunction with its partners, the Faculty of Medicine, the Goodman Cancer Research Centre and the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre.
Launched in 2019, ResearchMatch was conceived to fill an unmet need: to harness the huge datasets being generated in clinical research by enlisting the help of computational experts. “The challenge that ResearchMatch addresses is to facilitate connections between life science or clinical researchers with colleagues in data science,” explains Dr. Guillaume Bourque, Professor in the Department of Human Genetics at McGill’s Faculty of Medicine and MiCM co-lead along with Dr. David Buckeridge, Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health. “The goal is to empower and enable these collaborations to be impactful and to foster data-driven innovations.”
This year’s call for projects generated 51 submissions from life sciences and clinical researchers seeking partnerships with data science colleagues. Of these, 16 matches were made and ultimately eight projects were chosen to be funded.
July 2019
McGill initiative in Computational Medicine announces first cohort
of projects funded through ResearchMatch
Launched in March 2019 with a call for initial proposals, the ResearchMatch program of the McGill initiative in Computational Medicine (MiCM) was developed in an effort to better connect life science and clinical researchers with colleagues focused on data sciences.
“While some researchers have access to interesting datasets and questions, others are able to develop and apply quantitative methods to help look for answers,” explains Dr. Guillaume Bourque, Associate Professor in the Department of Human Genetics at McGill’s Faculty of Medicine and MiCM lead. “The challenge is that often the life science or clinical researchers don’t necessarily know where to find people with the right quantitative skills who are willing to collaborate and conversely data scientists don’t necessarily know who has interesting questions that they could help with. This challenge is what we aim to address through the creation of the ResearchMatch Program.”
