tranSMART Foundation Announces Keynote Speakers for 2014 Annual Meeting

Industry Experts from Harvard University, University of Michigan Medical School and OpenClinica to Speak

Wakefield, Massachusetts – September 29, 2014 – The tranSMART Foundation, a non-profit organization providing a global, open-source knowledge management platform for scientists to share pre-competitive translational research data, today announced the keynote speakers for its 2014 Annual Meeting being held October 14-16 at the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, MI.

The keynote speakers for the conference will include:

• Professor Matthias Kretzler, MD, University of Michigan Medical School will give a presentation on “The use of modern molecular tools to better understand disease mechanism activated in human renal biopsies”.
• Paul Avillach, MD, PhD, Research Associate at Harvard University will speak on “Toward Precision Medicine: Building a patient-centric information commons on common and rare diseases with tranSMART. Application to Autism and Phelan McDermid Syndrome”.
• Cal Collins, CEO of OpenClinica, will discuss “Enabling open source development and innovation: How the OpenCLINICA community does it”.

“This is our third Annual Conference and each year we continue to enhance and expand this event bringing more value to the attendees,” said tranSMART Foundation CEO Keith Elliston. “We have developed an exciting agenda of speakers focusing on not only our platform, but also on other open-source projects that we can learn from and in which we can interact. Our ultimate goals of our Annual Meeting is to celebrate the accomplishments of the previous year, further educate our developers and scientists, share how various groups are using the platform, and set the direction for the coming year. In doing this, we enhance the collaboration among our community and expand the uses of our open source platform across the scientific community to help progress the advancement of translational medicine.”

In addition to the keynote speakers, there will be presentations from numerous tranSMART community members sharing their experiences using the tranSMART platform. These speakers include experts from companies such as: Boehringer Ingelheim, Harvard, Human Proteome Organization, J&J, Orion Bionetworks, PerkinElmer, Thomson Reuters, tranSMART Foundation, University of California San Diego Medical School, University of Michigan.

The Annual Meeting will include at least two live Hackathon sessions; a poster competition; committee meetings for the Code, Content and Community committees; an awards ceremony; and social events. New this year, we have added a Foundation-sponsored User Training Class on tranSMART v1.2.

The University of Michigan, Rancho Biosciences and ConvergeHEALTH by Deloitte are Gold-level sponsors for the event. Reception and Dinner sponsors include BT and thehyve, while the Lunch and Coffee Break Sponsor is elevada. Our sponsors allow the Foundation to continue to hold the Annual Meeting with no Registration Fee again this year.

For more information on the tranSMART Foundation 2014 Annual Meeting and the complete agenda, visit the Foundation’s website. This is a free event, but attendees must register by clicking here.

About The tranSMART Foundation

The tranSMART Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides an open-source, cloud-based, data-sharing and analysis platform that enables scientists at universities, disease foundations, pharmaceutical companies, and government agencies around the world to share pre-competitive data in a way that saves money and time in translating research findings into new therapies and diagnostic tools. Founded to steward the tranSMART platform, the Foundation is headquartered in Wakefield, Massachusetts with Centers of Excellence in Ann Arbor, Mich.; London, England; Boston, Mass.; and Amsterdam, Netherlands. The tranSMART Foundation can also be found on the web at www.tranSMARTFoundation.org.