I3C Announces Board of Directors
I3C is a solutions-based organization whose members collaborate to develop common protocols and interoperable technologies (specifications and guidelines) for data exchange and knowledge management for the life-science community. The mission of the organization is to facilitate and enable data exchange, data management, and knowledge management across the entire life-science community by promoting common protocols that ensure interoperability in an open, consistent and robust manner. Founding organizations of I3C include the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), the Whitehead Institute, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, IBM, and Sun Microsystems.
Since its inception in February 2001, approximately 100 companies and academic institutions have asked to participate in this initiative.
In addition to the election, the focus of the meeting was to consider initial proposals from several regional informatics groups and universities to host the I3C offices and technical staff. Tim Clark, vice president of informatics for Millennium Pharmaceuticals, was elected to chair the organization. Jill Mesirov, CIO and director of bioinformatics and computational biology at the Whitehead Institute Center for Genome Research, was elected vice-chair. In addition to setting the agenda for I3C’s working groups for the next 12 months, the board also reviewed candidates for the executive director position that will oversee the day-to-day operations of I3C.
Other I3C board members include Morrie Ruffin, vice president of business development at BIO; Jeff Augen, director of business strategy for life sciences at IBM; and Sia Zadeh, group marketing manager of life sciences at Sun Microsystems. For more information about I3C or how to join, please visit the I3C Web site at www.I3C.org.
BIO represents more than 1,000 biotechnology companies, academic institutions, state biotechnology centers and related organizations in all 50 U.S. states and 33 other nations. BIO members are involved in the research and development of health-care, agricultural, industrial and environmental biotechnology products.
Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a leading biopharmaceutical company, applies its comprehensive and integrated science and technology platform for the discovery and development of breakthrough therapeutic and predictive medicine products, with a goal of enabling physicians to more closely customize medical treatment by combining knowledge of the genetic basis for disease and the genetic characteristics of patients on a molecular basis. Millennium is primarily focusing its research and development and commercialization activities in four key areas: cardiovascular, oncology, inflammation and metabolic disease. Through the industrialization of its gene-to-patient platform, Millennium is striving to accelerate the process of drug discovery and development. Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., Millennium currently employs more than 1,800 people.
IBM Life Sciences brings together IBM resources, from research, services and e-business expertise to data and storage management and high-performance computing, to offer new solutions for the life sciences market, including biotechnology, genomic, e-health, pharmaceutical, and agri-science industries. The fastest way to get more information about IBM Life Sciences is through its Web site, http://www.ibm.com/solutions/lifesciences.
Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) is a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that power the Internet and allow companies worldwide to take their businesses to the nth. Sun can be found in more than 170 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://www.sun.com.
The Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research is an international leader in genomics and has served as the flagship of the Human Genome Project, the international effort to determine the blueprint of a human being. The Center is one of the largest public sequencing centers in the world, and contributed nearly one-third of the human genome sequence now available on public databases. Today, the Center houses a broad range of thriving research programs combining genome analysis, medical and population genetics, cancer genomics and clinical medicine, and uses bioinformatics and computational biology to create, store, share, manage, interpret, and analyze biological data.
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