TRAINING THE NEXT GENERATION OF QUANTITATIVE BIOLOGISTS IN THE ERA OF BIG DATA

Francis Collins recently stated that, “the era of ‘Big Data ’ has arrived, and it is vital that the NIH play a major role in coordinating access to and analysis of many different data types that make up this revolution in biological information.”1 With this, Philip E. Bourne was named as the Associate Director for Data Science at the NIH, the first permanent appointment of this position. Additionally, through the Big Data Initiative started in 2012, the Obama Administration invested $200 million dollars in “big data ” research that promises “to greatly improve the tools and techniques needed to access, organize, and glean discoveries from huge volumes of digital data.”2 The term “big data ” extends beyond the research arena into the popular press. CNN Money ha