The increasing relevance of Big Data in modern life sciences creates one of the grand
challenges of our times. The analysis of large data sets is consequently emerging as one of the scientific key techniques in the post genomic era. Recently, the growing need for the analysis of massive data has further been accelerated by the advent and fast development of high-throughput next-generation sequencing technologies and the necessarily increasing cohort size of biomedical studies. Still the data analysis bottleneck limits the rate with which technological advances in genome-scale experimental platforms can actually provide new medical and biological insights.
CAMDA has a track record as a well-recognized annual conference going back to the year 2000. It soon received considerable attention from high impact journals like Nature and recently in Nature Communications (2019) as well as was featured in an editorial in Nature Methods in 2008. Recently called the
'Olympics for Genomics', this allusion indicates the ambitious and wide-ranging nature of the contest. The meeting has regularly been supported by high-profile organizations like the FDA and NIST.
CAMDA focuses on the analysis of massive data in the life sciences. It introduces and evaluates new approaches and solutions to the Big Data challenge. The conference presents new techniques in the field of bioinformatics, data analysis, and statistics for the handling and processing of large data sets, the combination of multiple data sources, and effective computational inference.
An essential part of
CAMDA is its open-ended data analysis challenge of complex data sets, often featuring novel technological platforms, exceptionally large cohorts, and heterogeneous data sources and types. Academic and industrial researchers worldwide alike are invited to take the
CAMDA challenge. Accepted contributions are presented in short talks, and the results of analyses are discussed and compared at the
CAMDA conference. Both contestants and other interested researchers are welcome at the meeting. Posters can provide an additional opportunity of presenting and discussing work.
The scope of
CAMDA Research Topic covers the challenges announced annual on the
CAMDA webpage
camda.info•
The Hi-Res Cancer Data Integration Challenge presents clinical and matched
molecular profiles, with read level data for individual genomes. Explore non-standard
genomes and splicing events for better prognosis.
•
The CMap Drug Safety Challenge presents clinical toxicity results, cellular and
molecular responses to hundreds of drugs. Compare and integrate a range of cell line
assays to predict the severity of the drug induced liver injury in humans.
•
The Metagenomic Geolocation Challenge presents thousands of city microbiome profiles in the context of climate data. Construct multi-source microbiome fingerprints and predict the ecological niche or exact geographical origin of mystery
samples.
This is contest specific with set of submission requirements. In particular:
- All research submitted to CAMDA must be previously unpublished original work
intended for publication, including procedures and results.
- Challenge data set embargo: Any challenge data that is not already in the public
domain remains exclusive for participants in the contest until conference
presentation. This means that no publication of your results is allowed prior to the
CAMDA conference.
- Once research has been accepted for publication at CAMDA, however, dissemination
by pre-print servers is fine and encouraged.
- Research introducing data sets outside the set CAMDA challenges need to put these
data in the context of the challenges and make both raw and derived data publicly
available if the submitted work is accepted.
- Methods research needs to include at least two independent types of validation,
such as a benchmark on simulated data with known truth, a benchmark on real-world
data with built-in truths, or an application to real-world data with critical
biological/medical interpretation.
- Researchers introducing novel computational approaches must make their procedure
available to others (e.g., source code or commercial demo), and a publication of
source code is strongly encouraged.