Outreach Core

Crucial to the long-lasting impact of the Center for Cancer Systems Therapeutics (CaST) is a robust Outreach effort. The community and computational infrastructure established by CaST Outreach in 2016-2022 will be leveraged as the foundation for the proposed core to meet the education and outreach challenges put forth by the Cancer Systems Biology Consortium (CSBC). The Core will expand the scope of CaST Outreach to 1) create widely accessible containerized software environments with tutorials and case studies for CaST tools; 2) develop new partnerships with cancer researchers and clinicians; 3) cultivate the next generation of scientists; and 4) foster systems approaches in science more generally. The overall mission of the Outreach Core will be realized synergistically through its Specific Aims by 1) developing online containerized packages that will combine CaST publications and resources with documented and video tutorials, domain-specific case studies, and computational workflows to facilitate dissemination and adoption; 2) expanding DREAM-High to introduce high-school students to exploratory analysis of cancer data and computational systems biology; 3) mentoring postdoctoral scientists for their future roles at academic institutions and in industry. The Outreach Core has already established key partnerships to support the proposed activities including 1) resource sharing with the CSBC and broader Columbia communities; 2) partnerships with high schools; and 3) the CSBC Education and Outreach Working group. Foundational to the success of ForCaST is a strategy of differentiated materials and formative assessment that will ensure that CaST research products and the underlying concepts and skills required to comprehend them, are shared through a variety of mechanisms to maximize appeal to scientists, clinicians, and students.