Data Modality & Methodology Task Force – 2025

Find a Collaborator
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Welcome to the Data Modality & Methodology Task Force 2025!

This group brings together researchers interested in building tools, workflows, and examples to support reproducible, collaborative analysis of Parkinson’s data across different modalities. Whether you’re just getting started or have deep expertise, you’re invited to participate.

Scope and Aims

Our goal is to provide example-driven guidance and reusable tools that help researchers across a range of data types—including imaging, clinical, omics, and more.

We aim to:

  • Share examples of standard methods and good practices across modalities
  • Foster reproducible and collaborative analysis workflows
  • Build on existing projects while creating space for new efforts based on community expertise and interest

2024 Project Summary

Last year, we launched five open-source projects. These resources are publicly available and designed to grow with your input. We will also host a webinar later this year to introduce these tools and share usage examples.

  1. Open Science Guide
    A living web book that provides practical guidance on open science, transparent and reproducible research.
  2. Small Project Template
    A lightweight GitHub template to support structured, reproducible, and collaborative analysis projects.
  3. Useful PPMI Clinical Codes
    A curated set of clinical codes used in PPM, including LEDD calculation, medical condition tagging, and medication parsing–organized for practical reuse in downstream analysis.
  4. Imaging Processing Repository
    Scripts, documentation, and examples for handling and preprocessing imaging data and extracting imaging features
  5. PIE: Parkinson’s Insight Engine
    A flexible, modular machine learning pipeline for multi-modal PPMI data from preprocessing to model evaluation. Modules include data loader, feature engineering, model building and reporting.

2025 Opportunities

To build upon our existing foundations, we aim to launch new collaborative projects. For the current year, potential focus areas encompass, but are not limited to:

  • Expanding imaging scripts
  • Integrating related repositories and projects
  • Developing a data wrangling guide web-book
  • Exploring epidemiology, epistatistics, and epigenetics methodologies
  • Establishing multi-omics scaffolding / integration
  • Working with sensor and wearable data
  • Applying AI/ML methods
  • Your ideas!

How to get involved

Everyone is welcome to participate, whether you want to lead a new project or just stay informed.

You can:

  • Propose and lead a new project
  • Contribute to existing repositories (code, examples, documentation, feedback)
  • Post ideas and suggestions directly in this thread—small or big, all are welcome
  • Join our bimonthly meetings for updates and collaboration

We will hold an initial kickoff meeting in July (TBD). The session will be recorded for those who can’t attend live.

Looking forward to another productive and creative year. Feel free to join us, send questions to @ehutchins or @hirotaka, or share your ideas below.

— Data Modality & Methodology Task Force Co-Chairs, @hirotaka and @ehutchins

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Hi @hirotaka! Thanks for sharing this overview, this is an amazing progress!
I’m currently doing a Master’s in Data Science and would love to contribute however I can. Looking forward to attending the initial meeting in July.

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Hi @ehutcins and @hirotaka, WOW! I think many will find the tools so useful.
Re: expansion - if epi/biostat is elevated - please loop me in to help!

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Hi @hirotaka! What a lot of work achieved in 2024, and what an exciting preview of 2025! I’m particularly interested in the data wrangling guide web book and applying AI/ML methods, although I will be interested in tracking progress on many of the other directions, too.

Thank you for your leadership and support in stewarding these efforts!

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@fbbriggs thank you - we could definitely use your expertise for epi/biostats!

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@vcatterson looking forward to continuing to work together. :slight_smile: we could definitely use your expertise on AI/ML methods.

For the data wrangling guide book, it’s an idea I had after seeing @mattk 's Open Science Guide. Right now the data wrangling guide is in PDF format on Zenodo, and I’d like to convert it to a Quarto book so it’s easier to update and doesn’t become outdated. It’s also an excuse for me to learn Quarto, hah! We can use a similar framework as the one Matt set up for the open science guide and go from there.

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Hi @mariam_isayan ! It’s nice to meet you. Looking forward to having you join! We will do a poll for meeting times soon.

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I love that idea! I’ve also been very inspired by seeing @mattk 's Open Science Guide, and it makes so much sense to have the data wrangling guide as an HTML document, so that search engines and other researchers may find it more easily than content in a PDF.

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Agree! Easier to search and easier to update. Looking forward to working together again!

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Hi @hirotaka! As a recently graduated Master’s in Data Science, I’m interested in collaborating with these. Especially the AI/ML methods, but I would love to be involved in whatever I can help. :star_struck:

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I’m happy to help convert to a Quarto book and host via GitHub; just let me know!

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Hi everyone,

Thank you for your interest in the task force!

Let’s try to hold a kick-off meeting next week before the summer vacation season begins.
Could you please indicate your availability using the Doodle poll below?

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you rock! looking forward to this!

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The meeting is set for
Thursday, July 17, 2025, at 11:00 AM (EST).

Invitations have been sent to those who responded to the Doodle.
If you didn’t receive one or would like to join, please let me know!
Looking forward to seeing you all!

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Dear Hirotaka,

Could you please send me the calendar invite? anajimenahdz@gmail.com

Thank you, see you on Thursday! :star_struck:

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We had a great kick-off meeting today!

For those who couldn’t make it, we introduced ourselves, reviewed the TF goals and deliverables, recapped last year’s progress, and brainstormed ideas for the 2025/26 season

Slides from the meeting

If you’re interested in joining:

  1. Please add your contact information in Sheet 1.
  2. Then check out Sheet 2 to choose one or more projects you’d like to join. You’re welcome to propose new ideas and assign yourself. Feel free to invite others too!

We’ll follow up in two weeks.
Questions or suggestions? Reach out to @hirotaka or @ehutchins!

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Thanks, @hirotaka ! It was a great meeting yesterday, with exciting ideas for the year ahead. I’m looking forward to seeing which projects we take forward!

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