Hi everyone, below is the content of the September Data Community Newsletter we sent out via email on September 2nd. Let us know if you didn’t receive it, or if you have topics you’d like to see in future newsletters!
September 2025 Data Community Newsletter
Community Programming
Do you work with PPMI data and are interested in applying AI/ML methods to your data analyses using Python? If so, we hope you’ll join our next webinar tomorrow, Wednesday, September 3rd, 11:00am-12:00pm (EDT), which will focus on a data science pipeline project. @cameronreidhamilton (Alliance AI) and @vcatterson (BioSymetrics) will be presenting a Python-based pipeline for multimodal data from PPMI, called the Parkinson’s Insight Engine (PIE). Read more and let us know if you’d like to be added to the calendar invite here.
In case you missed our webinar last month, we had the pleasure of hearing from @mattk (23&Me) and @hirotaka (NIH/DTi) as they presented their work Open Science Guide: An Online Book for Transparent and Reproducible Data Science Projects in Parkinson’s Disease. 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
This group will be having its next meeting in October, where it will continue to design programs and resources to help train the next generation of Parkinson’s disease researchers. If interested in serving as a mentor and/or joining the task force, please reach out to the task force leads or indicate your interest in this thread.
Data Modality and Methodology - Led by: @ehutchins & @hirotaka
This group has created various subgroups to address 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
Interested in contributing to one of the above groups? Do you have a suggestion for an additional group? If so, please indicate your interest in joining via the link above. This task force will have its next meeting on September 25th.
Networking and Outreach - Led by: @Vidash & @ecebayram
This group is tasked with expanding our community over the next year and increasing engagement of existing members. The next group meeting will take place later this month (exact date TBD). Are you interested in helping grow our community while expanding your own network? Join the team via the link above!
Visual Resource Generation - Led by: @vdardov & @paularp
Working to produce visual resources that will aid researchers in comprehending the complex topics discussed in our community, this group is beginning work on a collection of new webinars, tutorials, and other tools for the community. Do you have a visual resource you’d like to share and/or create with the community? Get involved in the task force thread (linked above)!
Resources and Ongoing Conversations
- @amclean started a discussion about NeuroX and WGS concordance.
- @ecebayram asked about Mendelian randomization and its application to summary stats in genetics.
- @vcatterson inquired as to the degree of curation which goes into the Curated Data Cut in PPMI, which @lkirsch was able to answer.
- @AmgadDroby shared an approach developed to address data pooling challenges in large-scale initiatives.
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:
- @cohanlon (RAND)
- @reece (Bridge Analytics)
- @Bayo (De Montfort University)
- @silasb11 (Duke University)
- @Ivy (University of Nairobi)
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.