Meet team 8: Interactive Publications Research Group

Team members:
Glenn Ford - U.S. National Library of Medicine, NIH, United States
Sameer Antani - U.S. National Library of Medicine, NIH, United States
Dina Demner Fushman - U.S. National Library of Medicine, NIH, United States
George Thoma - U.S. National Library of Medicine, NIH, United States

Project Title: Tools to build and use Interactive Publications

Project Website: http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/

<< Video Diary

INTERVIEW WITH TEAM 8

>> Academic background of team members
George Thoma, Ph.D. Electrical Engineering - Project Director
Glenn Ford, B.S. Computer Science Senior - Software Developer
Sameer Antani, Ph.D. Computer Science - Medical Imaging
Dina Demner-Fushman M.D., Ph.D. Computer Science - Medical text, natural language processing, statistics
Michael Chung, B.A. Visual art imaging and digital art - Software and Animation Expert

>> Current research interests related to Elsevier Grand Challenge
As an R&D branch, we have active projects in biomedical imaging, document image analysis, natural language processing, machine learning, animated historical books, and others. Our projects may be viewed on archive.nlm.nih.gov.

Some of our research, in biomedical imaging in particular, informs our interest in developing advanced tools for the creation, use and analysis of multimedia-rich publications. Through its Grand Challenge, Elsevier has provided the opportunity to showcase this effort.

>> Why were you inspired to enter the Grand Challenge?
It is clear that images and other multimedia are increasingly important to convey information, and thus are becoming key elements of published material. This is true in all disciplines, but particularly in medicine and other sciences. We entered the Grand Challenge to contribute to the future of scientific publishing.

>> What do you see as the greatest challenge in finalizing your Grand Challenge? (whether substantive, logistical, team composition, working solo etc.)
The biggest challenge is to evaluate our tools in depth and in a credible way. Evaluation criteria would include ease of use, and an increase in learning and comprehension afforded by Interactive Publications compared to traditional static documents. It would be ideal to conduct an evaluation in partnership with a publisher whose journal articles are rich with medical multimedia, and in which raw data from the underlying research is available. The reader may then not only view and navigate through the images and data, but also employ statistical tools to analyze the data, to reach conclusions possibly supplementing those of the author.
 
What would you do with the prize money?
Further development of tools; add features; ensure robustness; conduct comprehensive evaluations.

Copyright © Elsevier BV 2008-2012 | Privacy Policy | Terms and Conditions
Cookies are set by this site. To decline them or learn more, visit our Cookies page.