Hi everyone, below is the content of the October Data Community Newsletter we sent out via email on October 3rd. Let us know if you didn’t receive it, or if you have topics you’d like to see in future newsletters!
October 2025 Data Community Newsletter
Community Programming
In case you missed our webinar last month, we received a progress report from @cameronreidhamilton (Alliance AI) and @vcatterson (BioSymetrics) on their work on the Parkinson’s Insight Engine (PIE), a Python-based pipeline for multimodal data from PPMI. For more details, check out the thread on Discourse or view the webinar recording.
Task Force Updates
Our task forces are continuing their work to produce resources for PD researchers. These efforts rely on member contribution and we hope you’ll join one (or more) detailed below:
- Mentorship and Training - Led by: @psaffie & @malosco
- Working to design programs and resources to help train the next generation of Parkinson’s disease researchers, this task force’s current projects include the design and launch of a DCoP-wide mentor-mentee program, as well as the development and awarding of small-scale training grants.
- Data Modality and Methodology - Led by: @ehutchins & @hirotaka
- This group has created various subgroups to address data-specific needs identified by task force members. The subgroups’ scopes include:
- Focused PPMI Tools
- Imaging Interest
- Data Exploration and Processing
- Open Science Resources
- Epi-methods
- Examples of ongoing projects include the Open Science Guide, Parkinson’s Insight Engine, and PPMI-focused Jupyter notebooks.
- This group has created various subgroups to address data-specific needs identified by task force members. The subgroups’ scopes include:
- Networking and Outreach - Led by: @Vidash & @ecebayram
- Working to create a robust support system for researchers and practitioners working with Parkinson’s disease, this task force is designing a Knowing Me, Knowing You program to connect researchers both personally and professionally, as well as working to ensure DCoP presence at major PD conferences throughout the year.
- Visual Resource Generation - Led by: @vdardov & @paularp
- Continuing their work to provide the community with visual resources around PD research, this group’s current work includes:
- Coordinating DCoP webinars
- Developing a new PD symptom wheel
- Creating a PD research landscape diagram
- Continuing their work to provide the community with visual resources around PD research, this group’s current work includes:
Resources and Ongoing Conversations
- @abdulrehman.muhammad asked about where to find information related to single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in Fox Insight data.
- @psaffie started a discussion about collecting self-reported ancestry in highly admixed populations.
- @tiago.azevedo asked about MRI scanner metadata availability in Fox Insight’s Data Dictionary.
- @AmgadDroby shared a new DAT-SPECT subregional SBR processing pipeline now available on GitHub.
Welcome New Members!
We encourage you to reach out to our new members and extend a warm welcome to the community! Some of our new members include:
- @braah (Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center)
- @buddhi (University of Oxford)
- @sandrasanabria (Genentech)
- @cdwhelan (Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland)
- @mboss (GSK)
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! If you know of colleagues or other researchers who would be interested in joining, feel free to direct them to https://rcop.michaeljfox.org/ where they can set up an account.