Buetow Moves On from caBIG

By Bio-IT World Staff 

March 2, 2012 | Starting next Monday, March 5, Kenneth H. Buetow, former director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology at the National Cancer Institute, is joining Arizona State University as director of Computational Sciences and Informatics in the Complex Adaptive Systems Initiative (CASI). He will hold the rank of full professor in the School of Life Sciences in ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.  

Buetow previously headed NCI's caBIG program, or cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid, which won a Bio-IT World Best Practices Editors' Choice Award in 2008 (see, Connecting the Cancer Community caBIG Time). In March 2011, the board of scientific advisors for the working group on caBIG published an assessment finding a "lack of applications that demonstrate the value of caBIG to clinical and basic science investigators" and a "disconnect between caBIG leadership and cancer research community resulting from heavy use of contractors to manage the program." The group called for a one-year moratorium on new projects, contracts, and subcontracts by caBIG, and a thorough audit of all aspects of the caBIG budget and expenditures. (PDF slide deck of the report).  

Arizona State University's Complex Adaptive Systems Initiative (CASI) was established in 2009 to leverage ASU's interdisciplinary research strengths on challenges where cross-disciplinary effort is essential. The establishment of the Computational Sciences and Informatics program within CASI under Buetow's directorship will seek to develop world class computing and modeling expertise and capabilities with breadth and depth in key areas such as agent base modeling, visualization, algorithm development and expert systems in health care, the environment and national security.