Hi everyone! Below is the content of the May Data Community Newsletter we sent out via email on May 19. Let us know if you didn’t receive it, or if you have topics you’d like to see in future newsletters!
May 2025 Data Community Newsletter
We’re public!
We’re excited to announce that the Data Community of Practice is now officially open to the public! Many thanks to community members and champions (past and present) who have helped us reach this milestone. We’re excited for additional growth over the next year – if you know any colleagues who may be interested in joining us, please feel free to send them our way or have them check out the recent blog on the MJFF website to learn more!
Upcoming Programming
Have you been interested in integrating wearable or mobile app data into your analysis projects? If so, we hope that you will join our next community webinar! On Tuesday, May 27th, 12:00-1:00 pm New York (EDT), Dr. George Roussos (@roussos) of Birkbeck College, University of London, will be giving an overview of PDkit, a Python-based open source data science toolkit to support data-driven systems using smartphones and wearables. For more details, see this thread on Discourse.
Recent Conversations
- @ehutchins shared a GitHub repo she made for processing 10x data with PacBio.
- @danieltds discussed the importance of not only making scientific progress, but conveying the importance of one’s research to media and policymakers.
- Within our quarterly publications, conferences, and funding opportunities thread, @bmarebwa shared the newly announced MJFF Molecular MRI funding program.
Task Force Updates
The community’s task forces are continuing their work to produce programming and resources for the Parkinson’s disease research community. Please let us know if you’d like to join a preexisting task force or have a suggestion for a new one – we’d be happy to facilitate either! Read on for updates of their recent activity:
- @AmgadDroby, a member of the Data Modalities and Methodologies (DMM) Task Force, shared the newly created GitHub repository for imaging data processing. This repository compliments the multi-modal pipeline fellow task force member @cameronreidhamilton has been spearheading.
- @mattk shared the fourth chapter of the Open Science Guide, which provides examples of open science PD research. Other chapters include: Principles, Considerations, and Tools. All of these live in the MJFF Research Community GitHub.
- Last week, the Visual Resource Generation Task Force organized and hosted a community webinar, run by task force member @ekaamewu. The talk gave an overview of Getting Started With Parkinson’s Disease Data, a resource developed by a previous DCoP task force to assist researchers in navigating large PD datasets. You can view the recorded webinar here, hosted on the MJFF Data Repository on Zenodo.
- The Visual Resource Generation Task Force is also working on various resources and programming to welcome new members to our community and help them get acquainted with the forum. Check out the DCoP Welcome Video here.
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:
- @felipe_duartez (Universidad Nacional de Colombia)
- @CamillaKilbane (University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, Case Western Reserve University)
- @georgemc (Stevens Institute of Technology)
- @ilsgomes (Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre)
- @pbchan (Xuanwu Hospital)
That’s it for now – thanks for being members of our growing community. Please feel free to reach out with any questions, we look forward to hearing from you!