What is the Brain Commons?
Community + Data + Tools
The BRAIN Commons empowers the global research community by providing access to multi-model data, state-of-the-art tools and a secure interoperable system for data sharing.
We are entering a new era in brain research, driven by powerful data acquisition technologies generating multi-modal data at all spatial scales, coupled with a dramatic evolution in the cost of computing. To meet the challenges associated with brain health research, a paradigm shift is required that adapts our existing data analysis toolsets and data management processes to integrate massively multi-dimensional data to facilitate holistic modeling of the brain and its organization.
The BRAIN Commons represents a next-generation digital ecosystem that is uniquely able to meet today’s data analysis challenges facing brain researchers.
In order to maintain brain health, we must gain a profoundly deeper understanding of the brain’s trajectory through its lifespan, including the perturbations that represent disorder, disease and dysfunction as well as resiliency. The BRAIN Commons’ innovative integration of Data, Tools and Community will make this possible.
The Brain Commons implements best practices for data sharing:
Findable. Accessible. Interoperable. Reusable. (FAIR)
The BRAIN Commons is unique:
- It can exploit the massive multi-dimensional data being generated in a safe and compliant way
- Data across studies are integrate-able and query-able using a universal graph data model of the brain
- It is architected with flexibility so that it can evolve and scale with the data
- It supports compute in the cloud and high-speed computational modeling
- It promotes team science, where researchers can collaborate within and across communities, and share data, analytical tools, and insights!
Gen3 Data Commons
Data commons and data ecosystems
Data commons use cloud computing to provide services for managing, processing, analyzing and sharing large-scale biomedical data. Data ecosystems include multiple data commons and applications for analyzing data from them along with a common set of services for authenticating and authorizing users, indexing data, and working with clinical data.
Gen3 Software
Gen3 (gen3.org) is an open source software platform for building data commons and data ecosystems. A Gen3 data commons is based on a data model and includes services for exploring and analyzing data, submitting data, and managing the underlying data model. Gen3 data commons includes services for both managing large data objects, such as BAM files, CRAM files, and image files, as well as structured data, including clinical data. Gen3 data commons typically use public clouds, such as Amazon’s AWS and Google’s GCP, but can also use over private clouds and hybrid clouds.
