The CTSI Research Gateway is an initiative of the University of Pittsburgh's Clinical and Translational Science Institute to provide researchers and others with better ways to find experts, collaborators and resources at the Health Sciences Center. Research Gateway consists of a suite of tools that are designed to work together and simplify common activities of researchers at Pitt. Research Gateway currently comprises the following applications:

Digital Vita is based on a social network and allows users to manage CV and NIH biosketch information, and to create and edit an online profile. It automatically imports data from external sources and propagates publications to co-authors. Version 2 of Digital Vita will allow users to build networks of colleagues they collaborate with as well as generate annual evaluation documents.

The concept and initial design of Digital Vita were developed by a team of masters students in human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University. A 10-min. video illustrates the prototype:

• low quality video [600x450 pixels]; 19 MB
• high quality video [720x480 pixels]; 279 MB (codec; extract zip file and start "mpeg-2.exe.")
• video on YouTube

The following publications describe Digital Vita and the underlying research:

• Spallek H, Schleyer T, Butler BS. Good partners are hard to find: the search for and selection of collaborators in the health sciences. Presented at: Project Management and User Engagement. Fourth IEEE International Conference on eSciene (eScience 2008); 2008 Dec 7-12; Indianapolis, IN. Los Alamitos: IEEE Computer Society; 2008 p. 462-7.
• Schleyer T, Spallek H, Butler BS, Subramanian S, Weiss D, Poythress ML, Rattanathikun P, Mueller G. Facebook for scientists: Requirements and services for optimizing how scientific collaborations are established. J Med Internet Res 2008;10(3):e24.
• Schleyer T, Spallek H, Butler BS, Subramanian S, Weiss D, Poythress ML, Rattanathikum P, Mueller G. Requirements for expertise location systems in biomedical science and the Semantic Web. Proceedings of “Personal Identification and Collaborations: Knowledge Mediation and Extraction (PICKME)”, workshop at the International Semantic Web Conference, 2008.

Experts is a module that will provide powerful search and retrieval capabilities for Digital Vita profiles to users inside and outside of the University of Pittsburgh. Experts will facilitate flexible searching of all biomedical researchers at Pitt, allow detailed comparisons, and provide easy-to-digest and comprehensive information about individual researchers. We are currently developing the design specifications for Experts.

Tools will provide a comprehensive directory of resources for biomedical research at Pitt, such as core facilities, laboratories, equipment and services.The development of Tools is currently suspended since a group headed by Dr. Michael Becich, Chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Pitt, is working on a similar project.

At the beginning of the Research Gateway project, we intended to develop the University of Pittsburgh's Faculty Research Interests Project (FRIP; see http://frip.health.pitt.edu) further through a project called FRIP+. The new version of FRIP was intended to provide expertise location services in a more decision support-oriented interface. A prototype and instructions are available through the following links:

FRIP+ prototype (1.67 MB)
FRIP+ prototype instructions

However, because of implementation difficulties and design challenges, this effort has not been further pursued as a separate project. Instead, selected features are being integrated with the Experts project.

For more information about the Research Gateway project, please contact the project director, Dr. Titus Schleyer.