February 18, 2011 -- After two years of development, the International Aging Research Portfolio (IARP) http://www.agingportfolio.org/ will be launching on February 24, 2011. The IARP is an independent non-profit initiative serving the aging research community. As the only centralized knowledge management system containing the international grant databases, publications and project information, the IARP provides highly granular, relevant information to scientists, funding organizations and policy makers, as well as a platform for collaboration and research. Presently, the system incorporates grant databases from the National Institutes of Health, European Commission, Canadian Institutes of Health Research and other sources and provides a categorized directory of research projects linked to related publications within the MEDLINE abstract database.
Aging research spans many areas of natural and social and behavioural sciences and requires a high degree of interdisciplinary and international cooperation. The goal of IARP is to provide a centralized decision support system for scientists, research institutes, funding organizations and policy makers involved in aging research. In June 2008 the first prototype of the IARP system was created by the independent interdisciplinary team of gerontologists and computer scientists to analyze government and private spending on aging research. Over 50 volunteers contributed to development of the system since then.
The scientific advisory board, chaired by Dr. Charles Cantor, is comprised of over 30 thought leaders in natural and social and behavioral sciences related to aging research and is expected to grow to over 200 members. The IARP uses automatic classification algorithms to categorize research projects into categories related to aging research. The system allows for the SAB members and approved category editors to classify the research projects manually and train the automatic classification algorithms.
The site grants users access to research and funding information for over a million of projects. The IARP is a fully searchable, flexible and highly scalable knowledge-management system developed to enable organizations to collaborate, track, analyze, structure, make decisions and set directions for future research efforts in aging. It addresses the needs of research investigators, health care policy makers, government officials, interest groups and general public.
For more information, please visit www.agingportfolio.org/about/ user name: admin, password: draft777
for any further information or to set up interviews with any of our founding volunteers please email me at frankel@agingportfolio.org or 310-864-8365
