DBHI and Drexel Collaborate to Advance Biomedical Data Science Education

CHOP’s Department of Biomedical and Health Informatics (DBHi) is proud to announce the award of an NIH grant for “Educational Pathways in Biomedical Data Science.”

Submitted by Joy Payton and the Arcus Data Education team, with Jeff Pennington as Principal Investigator, this grant will create evidence-based pathways to meet researchers where they are on the data science learning curve. Pathways and supporting modules will equip researchers to perform cutting-edge research with massive datasets.

The grant builds upon an existing partnership between the College of Computing and Informatics of Drexel University and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Research Institute, grounding the project in both computing and biomedical research practice. The investigators will collaborate with the CHOP Office of Academic Training and Outreach Programs to recruit learners from many existing CHOP training initiatives, including an existing data science education program, graduate student training, postdoc mentorship, physician fellowship research, and clinical research staff training.

Data Science instruction for researchers outside of traditional academic programs is a concrete step toward data-driven scientific literacy for all. Participants in the program will gain computational and algorithmic literacy solidified through hands-on experience. Biomedical researchers will learn foundational data skills necessary to contribute meaningfully to machine learning data-driven systems research. NIH support for this work will help individuals from a broad spectrum of backgrounds and identities develop their careers and move data science research forward.