Hi everyone! Below is the content of the April Data Community Newsletter we sent out via email on April 1. Let us know if you didn’t receive it, or if you have topics you’d like to see in future newsletters.
April 2025 Data Community Newsletter
Community Updates
The MJFF Data Community of Practice is now a public community where anyone can register. As we continue to grow, we are interested in welcoming students to join us! If you have any suggestions on how best to reach them or have specific mailing lists we can contact, let us know at: researchcommunity@michaeljfox.org.
Resources and Ongoing Conversations
- @bmbrown317 asked about metadata availability within the Fox Insight PD Microbiome (PDMB) cohort.
- @roussos introduced PDkit, a Python toolkit for analyzing data from mobile apps and wearables. George will be presenting his work in more detail at an MJFF Data Community webinar, on Tuesday, May 27th, 12:00-1:00 pm New York (EDT)*. Please reply to this post if you’re interested in attending! *Note: This webinar was originally scheduled for April 23rd, but had to be rescheduled. Sorry for any inconvenience, and we hope to see you there!
- @gdp22 will be attending IAPRD (International Association of Parkinsonism and Related Disorders) 2025 in New York City next month. Will you be there? Let Gian know in the thread!
- @andrewcoogan shared his recent publication using Fox Insight data to investigate self-reported sleep problems in PD. Have you recently published your work? Share it with us in our quarterly publications, presentations, and funding opportunities thread.
Task Force Updates
The four MJFF task forces are continuing their work to produce programming and resources for the Parkinson’s disease research community.
- The Networking and Outreach Task Force held a webinar, entitled Networking as a Tool for Career Development. Thank you to our speaker, Dr. Deborah Hall, a neurologist and movement disorder specialist at Rush University Medical Center for speaking. If you missed it, you can view the webinar here!
- In a recent Data Modalities and Methodologies Task Force meeting, @mattk and @cameronreidhamilton shared updates on their projects: an Open Science Guide and a Python-based preprocessing and analysis pipeline for multimodal data, respectively. You can view those and other ongoing projects in the MJFF Research Community GitHub.
- Unsure how to navigate or engage with our forum on Discourse? The Visual Resource Generation Task Force is working on various resources and programming to welcome new members to our community and help them get acquainted with the forum. Check out the Discourse how-to video here.
- The Mentorship and Training Task Force’s first collaborative project (@AnnaliseMiner, @namburin, @mattk, and @malosco) has begun its initial data analyses, using Fox Insight data to investigate the link between head trauma and soccer players in PD. If you’re interested in becoming a mentor, check out task force co-lead @psaffie 's post, follow the instructions, and we will be in touch with next steps! If you’re looking for a mentor, please fill out this form.
Welcome New Members
In the last month we welcomed several new members from a range of labs and disciplines. We encourage you to reach out to our new members and extend a warm welcome to the community! Some of our new members include:
- @amygallagher (Dublin Neurological Institute)
- @ADalby (Teitur Trophics)
- @andrewcoogan (Maynooth University)
- @ara8 (University College London)
That’s all for now, hope to see you around the forum or at an upcoming task force meeting! As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions either to @gginnan, @jgottesman, or our inbox at researchcommunity@michaeljfox.org.