Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
workstation hardware.
It's important to note that a robust communications infrastructure and tools capable of supporting
the interactive interplay and exchange of data are necessary but insufficient to foster collaboration.
Collaborations are built around interested, engaged, and motivated participants with a common
vision. The concept of people- and project-centered communities of practice, as used in the field of
knowledge management, seems most applicable here. The best collaborations, whether in real or
virtual workspaces, can be facilitated by technology, but not dictated or even directed by it. In
addition, some tasks are better performed in a hierarchical collaborative environment in which a
team leader performs all of the work, based on suggestions from the other collaborators.
For example, consider that simulations are an excellent means of exploring what-if scenarios in an
interactive format. As communication tools, simulations can be used to illustrate complex processes
and dynamic relationships—such as protein docking—in an easy-to-understand, visual form.
However, enabling peer-to-peer collaborative simulation building, in which each participant can take
turns defining the parameters of the simulation from their perspective, isn't necessarily desirable.
The exception is when collaborators have a shared vision of how the simulation should function and
share the working assumptions of the underlying models. Without this shared vision, there is a
significant risk that the resulting simulation won't reflect the best art of any of the collaborators.
The considerations of technology-enabled collaboration in bioinformatics aren't limited to small group
projects such as constructing a molecule over the Internet, but extend to institutions and
government supporters. For example, the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics
(RCSB), one of the major collaboratories in bioinformatics, is a consortium consisting of the
Biochemistry Department of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, the San Diego
Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and Department of
Biochemistry, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Similarly, the funding of the RCSB is through an
equally diverse collaboration. The PDB is operated by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey;
the SDSC at USCD; and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), with funds from
the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the National Institute of General Medical
Sciences, and the National Library of Medicine.
