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Register now for the 3rd Annual Maryland Cyber Challenge

Live Finals! October 8 and 9, 2013 at the Baltimore Convention Center

• Three levels of team competition:
• high school (network defense)
• college, and professionals (capture the flag)
• Open to competitors across the United States, travel costs for finals are the team’s responsibility
• Lock in early for $50 discount team member names must be finalized by Monday, Sept. 9
• Competition schedule includes practice rounds, qualification rounds and a final cram session
• Team registration includes conference pass per team member and coach

“Deidentified” data on individual participants in more than 200 GlaxoSmithKline-sponsored clinical trials are now available to independent researchers, company officials said.

And by the end of the year, the database is likely to include patient-level data from some 400 interventional trials, according to Perry Nisen, MD, PhD, and Frank Rockhold, PhD, of GSK’s research division in King of Prussia, Pa.

“All of us in the life sciences, medical device, and consumer industries are trying to get better at collaboration,” observed Robert Urban, PhD, head of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) Innovation Center in Boston. For the Boston Innovation Center, which opened June 27, “getting better” includes enormous flexibility in the details of the early stage collaborative deals it inks with individual entrepreneurs, small companies and research institutions.

“A key focus is real adaptability. We strive to build collaborations that are unique to particular opportunities, based upon their specific needs. We have no preconceived notions regarding collaboration. Everything’s on the table,” Urban emphasized. Consequently, there’s no one typical deal or collaboration model. Instead, J&J’s team of business, scientific and transaction experts looks at each individual opportunity during their early stages to determine feasibility, fit within J&J’s goals and the best way to move forward.

Innovation is a hot topic in organizations today. And no wonder. Customers want new and different. Costs can’t be reduced any further. Business pressures abound. The economic picture is spotty. Competition is fierce.

Innovation to the rescue!

Slices from thousands of brains fill nearly a dozen freezers set to 112 degrees below zero on the top floor of a research building at the Johns Hopkins Science + Technology Park.

Inside those slices might be the secrets to schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. On a recent morning, researchers with the Lieber Institute for Brain Development performed dissections of the amygdala, an almond-shaped mass of neurons thought to play a key role in such diseases.

Rhode Island’s capital city should forget about becoming another Silicon Valley, venture capitalist Josh Kopelman said during a talk Tuesday at Betaspring, the business incubator in the Knowledge District.

It’s an unrealistic goal for Providence and the many other cities that aspire to become the nation’s next technology hub. But, said Kopelman, the founder and managing partner of First Round Capital, that doesn’t mean those communities can’t carve out their own niche in an industry that’s growing at a feverish pace.

The National Institutes of Health will fund up to $24 million per year for four years to establish six to eight investigator-initiated Big Data to Knowledge Centers of Excellence. The centers will improve the ability of the research community to use increasingly large and complex datasets through the development and distribution of innovative approaches, methods, software, and tools for data sharing, integration, analysis and management. The centers will also provide training for students and researchers to use and develop data science methods.

Biomedical research is increasingly data-intensive, with researchers routinely generating and using large, diverse datasets. Yet the ability to manage, integrate and analyze such data, and to locate and use data generated by others, is often limited due to a lack of tools, accessibility, and training. In response, NIH launched the Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) initiative in December. This initiative supports research, implementation, and training in data science that will enable biomedical scientists to capitalize on the transformative opportunities that large datasets provide. The investigator-initiated BD2K Center of Excellence funding opportunity is the first of several BD2K funding opportunities to be announced in coming months.

When Qiagen scooped up Ingenuity Systems this year, the acquisition of the Redwood City, California-based firm marked the first time the biotechnology giant had purchased a firm that exclusively makes software.

The purchase allows Qiagen to analyze information it derives from the genetic maps of organisms, which can be used to detect variations and mutations that point to the cause of certain diseases or new ways to treat them.

There’s a “No Vacancy” sign hanging out front University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s research and development park, and leaders say they have the state’s cyber security industry to thank.

University officials say the popularity of cyber security and growth in the number of young companies launching in that industry contributed to bwtech@UMBC’s popularity in recent years. The research and technology park is at capacity for the first time since it was established in 1989.