NETWORKS

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded more than $300,000 to NCSA researcher Noshir Contractor for a three-year effort to develop social networking tools to enable collaboration among various researchers, physicians, epidemiologists, and public health experts dealing with tobacco-related illnesses. At NCSA, Contractor leads the Science of Networks in Communication (SONIC) group. SONIC addresses the discovery, diagnosis, and design of communication and knowledge networks, helping communities tap their own wells of information, helping leaders identify key characteristics of communities, and helping communities tune existing networks and structure new networks to more effectively achieve their goals. "In addition to powerful cyber-resources, research communities also need cyber-environments that provide them with the communication and collaboration tools needed to bridge physical distances and disciplinary divisions," said NCSA Director Thom Dunning. The tobacco research community involves many experts from a wide variety of disciplines. Consequently, information gathered by one group is often not known to others. Empirical evidence showing that low-tar/low-nicotine cigarettes did not reduce cancer risk was available for a decade before it was widely circulated and known. To avoid future information gaps and delays, government agencies involved in public health launched the Tobacco Behavioral Informatics Grid (ToBIG) to enable collaboration within the Tobacco Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Evaluation Network (TSEEN). In addition to these cyberinfrastructure tools, TSEEN sees a pressing need for social network referral tools to open lines of communication and enhance collaboration. Contractor and other researchers in the fields of information science, social science, and public health will undertake a pioneering effort to incorporate social networking tools into the ToBIG infrastructure. "A comprehensive surveillance and evaluation system is critical to identifying the status, gaps, and needs for planning more effective and efficient interventions that will make a stronger impact on reducing population-wide tobacco use, saving millions of lives and billions of dollars within our lifetime and for our children," said David Abrams, director of the National Institutes of Health Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research. "Having this networking infrastructure will dramatically improve and leverage the capabilities and capacity of our existing resources." In addition to the grants to NCSA, NSF also awarded a total of more than $300,000 to researchers at Indiana University, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, with additional funding from the National Cancer Institute, Centers for Disease Control, and the American Legacy Foundation bringing the total funding for the project close to $1 million.