Science of information the focus of tomorrow's conference

BYLINE: Karen Buckelew

Maryland, Steve Walker said, has a closely kept secret - and the Informatics Coalition wants to blow its cover. Walker, a member of the board of the Maryland Technology Development Corp. or TEDCO and a nationally recognized information technology and security expert, a few years ago began taking stock of the state's IT resources. Within the state's borders there are more than 100 federal labs and agencies, and 280-some research institutions based at universities, noted Walker and his colleagues at the statewide Technology Leadership Consortium.

And all of these groups, Walker said, are using informatics, the science of information, which includes the use of computing to collect, organize and analyze data, among other things. Many of them likely were duplicating work their peers at other agencies already had mastered. "I like to talk about this as our best-kept secret," Walker said of the state's informatics resources. "We didn't realize everyone was basically using the same computing underpinnings for the data mining or knowledge discovery they were doing. " The result was the Informatics Coalition, a group of about 50 academic, private and federal agency representatives that last fall began meeting once every two months to discuss and review the region's informatics strengths and weaknesses. The coalition's first major public effort kicks off tomorrow with InformaticsMARYLAND 2006, an all-day conference expected to draw more than 200 attendees to the Maritime Institute of Technology in Linthicum Heights. The group, which has no legal status, has raised about $50,000 in grant money, all banked by TEDCO. "This is just a bunch of very busy technical people who are excited about getting together to see if they can do more than they were doing before," Walker said. The seminar is a chance for even more informatics professionals - including medical experts that use computing for activities like organizing and analyzing genomic information - to get in on the secret. Scientists will be talking about their work in sessions that will be recorded and distributed on DVD to all the attendees in hopes deals will get done and partnerships formed. "The purpose is to showcase [the state's] large number of activities in the hopes that people will realize, 'Hey, other people are doing the same thing I'm doing. Maybe we should get together and do something. '" The goal includes sharing technology that doesn't necessarily threaten the intellectual property accumulated and protected at federal and academic labs. Stephen Halperin, dean of the College of Computer, Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Maryland, College Park, said the community is in need of a central event, "in the hope people would become energized. " Halperin has been involved in the coalition since the beginning and helped plan the conference. At the event, he said, researchers with problems in their work can bounce ideas off each other, or in submitting grant applications, they can cite supporting work from others. Companies launching recruitment efforts or looking for new technology can have a place to start, he added. And a centralized voice draws more attention than each agency speaking out on its own, Halperin said: "I think there is, across the state, a big resource in this general area that is not exploited to maximum effect. " The conference is the first of many, Walker said. Another is planned in June in Montgomery County to focus on bioinformatics; there is talk of a third next October focusing on knowledge discovery. "I think the informatics coalition is certainly a group that will evolve," said Renee Winsky, interim executive director of TEDCO. Halperin said its economic development message is simple: "We hope that people within the region and outside the region recognize our strength. We don't have the cachet of the Silicon Valley, but we do an awful lot here. "