Data Science Core

Summary, Data Science Core The Data Science Core (DSC) serves multiple purposes related to moving, storing, analyzing, and sharing data. The data sets collected by this collaboration will be very large (PB scale) and multi-modal, including: Brain-wide, mesoscale anatomy (Project 1-4); spatial transcriptomics (Project 2, Molecular Science Core); large-scale in vivo

electrophysiology (Project 3, 4); brain slice synaptic physiology and voltage imaging (Project 3); behavior (Project 4); large-scale simulations of neural circuits (Project 5). Implementing algorithms to extract knowledge from these large-scale and complex data sets demands professional data science and software practices. The DSC will

configure the infrastructure to efficiently share data and analysis pipelines in the cloud. Individual research projects also require support for implementing data analysis algorithms and related software engineering. The DSC will implement and refine analysis algorithms so that these can be applied to data at scale. In addition to

discoveries, research papers, and reagents, data itself is a major product of our proposed research. This team is not only committed to open science but has a history of delivering. Anatomical, molecular, neurophysiological and behavioral data will be made available in widely-used repositories in standardized data formats. The DSC

will support the sharing of data within the team and with the scientific community at large. The thalamus is a collection of nuclei that has been traditionally segmented using low-dimensional information, including cytoarchitecture and single-channel immunohistochemistry. The existing segmentations (i.e.

anatomical atlases) are not sufficient to describe the rich functional architecture of the thalamus. We therefore need to register all measurements precisely to thalamic sub-regions, agnostic to current notions of intra-thalamic boundaries. A major task for the DSC is to register anatomical (Project 1, 2), molecular (Project 2, MSC) and

neurophysiological measurements (Projects 3, 4) at the highest possible resolution to a standardized reference atlas (the Allen Common Coordinate Framework, CCF). Localization of all measurements within the thalamus is an important step in discovering the architecture and functional logic of the thalamus. The DSC will implement

efficient and accurate workflows for spatial alignment of all data in the CCF. The DSC will subscribe to the following principles: i) implement best practices with respect to FAIR (Findable, Accurate, Interoperable, Reusable) data principles; ii) reuse and extend community data standards; iii) rely on

existing data repositories as available; and iv) reuse and build on existing open source software ecosystems.