Jane Roskams

Over the last 10 years, Dr. Roskams' research interests – in the regulation of abnormal nervous system development and brain repair – have shifted into how much we can learn from data that has already been produced in thousands of previous studies - by in the field of brain big data science. These days, she can be found developing new ways to interlink data silos to drive the democratization of data-based discovery, and forging new collaborative highways and platforms for accessible open data sharing and analytics. Recently returned from serving as Executive Director at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, Dr. Roskams has become a respected leader in the brain Open Data movement. She currently chairs the development of analytics and training for the Trans-Canada Canadian Open Neuroscience Platform (CONP), and the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating facility (INCF, Karolinska Institute). She also co-developed Mozak (https://www.mozak.science) – a game-based citizen neuroscience platform designed to engage teams of the “lay public” in the analysis of brain big data, providing a new closed-loop human-computer interface to enhance machine learning (ML) and AI in neuroscience discovery. Mozak – developed in collaboration with Zoran Popovic, (University of Washington) has been funded by both NSF and NIH, and is the largest federally funded citizen neuroscience project. As co-founder of the Cascadia Data Network, she is also working with data scientists across several initiatives (including the EU’s Human Brain Project, BRAIN initiative, CONP and several tech-based efforts) to expand access to analytical training to enhance our understanding of neurological disease, and to develop novel pathways to integrate data from the different models (animal, iPS cell) that we use to study brain disorders. She is currently working between the INCF, the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) and several other organizations to to develop an online open framework (The INCF Training Space) for globally-accessible neuroinformatics training.