Présentation

The iCONICS platform provides access to software solutions and methodological expertise for a variety of biomedical data management and analysis processes. We support scientists and clinicians from st

THE CONTEXT

Neuroscience encompasses a huge diversity of brain exploration strategies, in studies going from basic biology to clinical research, which include the production of omics, cell imaging, electrophysiology, neuroimaging, behavioral, cognitive and clinical data.
Developing data management and analytics solutions for neurological data thus represents an important challenge given the heterogeneity, the dimensionality and the complexity of such data, for each modality alone, and for their combination.

OUR MISSIONS AND ACTIVITIES

The iCONICS core facility develops, maintains and makes available to the biomedical community methods and software tools for data management and analytics.

It runs its own research and development, and assists scientists and clinicians in their projects by providing both technological solutions and methodological expertise, along four lines of activities:

• support for data management (curation, standardization, structuration, integration and visualization);
• development and deployment of bioinformatics pipelines to process a range of genetics and (epi)genomics data;
• support in statistical analysis, including the development and application of advanced methods for the integrative analysis of multimodal data;
• development and deployment of graphical tools to help in the operation of methods and in the interpretation of complex data.

In addition to diseases and models relating to the central nervous system, the platform offers its assistance to any biomedical research project aimed at better understanding the mechanisms underlying human pathologies, from the experimental design of studies to data management, processing, integration and analysis, up to the interpretation of results.

OUR ACCESS MODALITIES

iCONICS provides researchers with expert support ranging from mere consulting to basic bioinformatics and biostatistics services, and full-scale scientific projects.

The platform operates primarily on a collaborative basis, through scientific partnerships with the requesting teams (i.e. co-application for funds, co- supervision of dedicated staff), leading to co-authorship when the contribution of iCONICS experts warrants it.

Services are also invoiced for standardized or customized analyses.

Do not hesitate to contact iconics@icm-institute.org for any enquiry.

THE ENVIRONMENT

iCONICS activities and strategy are regularly reviewed by a user committee and an expert committee. The former gathers all users of the platform during a yearly meeting, which gives the opportunity to present the latest developments and services, and get feedback from users. The latter is composed of the following scientists: Stéphanie MILLECAMPS, Fanny MOCHEL, Carlos PARRAS, Jacobo SITT, Giovanni STEVANIN; their role is to discuss strategic orientations (including scientific priorities, interactions with other platforms, future needs, etc.).

iCONICS is a core component of the Center for Neuroinformatics of the ICM, whose main objective is to promote the harmonization and sharing of best practices in data management and analytics across the Institute. In this framework, iCONICS works side-by-side with the IT department to define the operational conditions for the use of high-performance storage and cluster systems, and to set up procedures for the development and deployment of scientific applications.

iCONICS is affiliated to a local network of core facilities (Sorbonne Université “Réseau Omique”) and to the national infrastructure « Institut Français de Bioinformatique” (IFB), with the coordination of several actions and the participation in the executive committee.