Biomedical Informatics

Biomedical informatics at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) provides support for the conduct, administration, analyses, and dissemination of clinical and translational research from bench to clinic to populations. Informatics systems supports investigators across the research spectrum in order to

1. accelerate clinical and translational hypothesis and research team development,
2. ensure efficient patient, data and tissue acquisition and management, meanwhile supporting regulatory compliance,
3. develop informatics tools and infrastructure for data analysis, and
4. develop novel eHealth technologies for the translation and dissemination of new knowledge to best care practices.

Recently, UMMS has made major investments including the establishment of the

• Program in Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology, 
• Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, and
• new infrastructure support and the expansion of high-performance computing and research data storage infrastructure:
  • Conquering Diseases Biorepository Core.
  • Clinical and Translational eRepository (CaTeR) (to be established to unite clinical and molecular data on 80% of Central Massachusetts residents).
  • Massachusetts Integrated Clinical Academic Research Database (MICARD) is implemented using i2b2 technology (see diagram at left and visit https://www.i2b2.org).
  • UMMS Quality Assurance Review Center (QARC) Database.

In addition, the hospital partner of UMMS, UMass Memorial Health Care (UMMHC) is making a $120M investment in a new and unified electronic medical record system.

Massachusetts Integrated Clinical Academic Research Database (MICARD)

MICARD will be expanded to function as a searchable catalogue and house the data generated from the newly established Conquering Diseases Biorepository, as well as the molecular profiling data generated on patient samples. This two-tier organization will federate all available data for clinical and translational research into a coherent structure, which is essential for high data integrity and easy access.

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 New Program in Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology (BIB)

Zhipeng Weng, PhD
Director, Program in Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology
Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology

Zhiping Weng graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1992 with B.S. in Electrical Engineering. In 1993, she entered the graduate program in Biomedical Engineering at Boston University, and received her Ph.D. in 1997. The focus of her thesis research was in computational biology, specifically on calculating binding free energies of protein-protein interactions.

In January 1997 Dr. Weng was appointed Instructor of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University. In that capacity she taught and conducted research, and had primary responsibility for the development of the Bioinformatics program and the core curriculum in Bioinformatics.  In January 1999 the Biomedical Engineering Department at Boston University decided to grow in the area of Bioinformatics.  After a national search, the department appointed Dr. Weng a tenure-track assistant professor. In September 2003, Dr. Weng was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. Until December 2007, Dr. Weng’s research had been focused on developing computational methods to obtain a predictive understanding of transcriptional regulation and protein-protein interaction. She had published 90 articles, including 75 peer-reviewed journal articles.

On 1 January 2008, Dr. Zheping Weng arrived at the University of Massachusetts Medical School to build and direct the new Program in Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology. She is a full professor, with tenure in Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology. She continues research on computational analysis of transcriptional regulation. She has started to study epigenomics and nucleosome positioning, which play important roles in transcriptional regulation. In addition, she is investigating the function and regulation of small RNAs in metazoan. For more information, please visit Dr. Weng's lab Website (http://zlab.bu.edu).

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