Season 1 Season 2 CK Map

What we’re aiming for

Cancer is a complex disease. A disruptive approach such as Epidemium is complementary to traditionnal research and will help the scientific community to…

Explore

Uncharted territories

and identify possible new insights on cancer

Accelerate

Research

by leveraging crowd intelligence and rapid prototyping

Test

New ideas

and prototype as many ideas as possible

Improve

Research outcomes

by iterating on existing solutions/hypothesis leveraging the potential of open source and Big Data techniques

I join in

What does participating mean ?

Collaborate according to your time availability

You can either participate by achieving a simple 1 hour task, or by starting and leading a new project…it’s up to you !

Provide your skills to the community

Epidemium is about gathering people with various, complementary skills, to join the fight against cancer.

Choose what you are participating in

Discover the existing projects and join the one you prefer, or help different teams by taking several tasks on your plate.

5 steps to reach the goal


The aim of the program is to address cancer research related scientific question. Our goal is to support each team in its research until publication.

To reach this, we developed a 5 steps approach. This plan includes the review of each step by experts and a mid-challenge presentation to the jury. At the end of the challenge, each selected team will present their results, including a scientific poster and a publication paper draft.

Recommended milestones and time frame:

  • Definition of the research project [2 weeks]
  • State of the art [2 weeks]
  • Data selection and method [2 weeks]
  • Research and analysis [5 weeks]
  • Results and draft for a scientific paper [2 weeks]

    • Each milestone should be reviewed by an expert to continue. Presentation of the project should include information such as:

  • Scientific question
  • Data used
  • Method / approach
  • Rules on how to contribute

    • As openness is one of the program’s core values, every contribution, database, content and piece of code used or produced within your project will be released under open licences. So, we recommend you to use the following licences:

  • Database: CC BY 4.0, CC BY SA 4.0, ODBL,
  • Code: BSD, MIT, AGPL, GPL3
  • Graphic content: CC BY 4.0, CC BY SA 4.0

    • Any project leader, members of their team and contributors should respect the ethical charter of the program. This charter has been written by the independent ethic committee of Epidemium and as the rules it applies to all participants and contributors.

    Your skills will make the difference

    Remember only one rule: Epidemium is open to everyone!

    All profiles are welcome: professionals, students or curious people, all keen to tackle the issues of cancer, big data and open science.

    Given the issues and objectives of the projects, team leaders will have to draw on a wide range of know-how. So, whatever your area and level of expertise are, and even if you are only available on short amounts of time, the community will need you and you will find your place here.

    You are still not sure whether your specific, original skills can help? Working on big data analysis for cancer research is not only a matter of big data, analysis, cancer and research. Graphic, design, legal, economical, sociological, ethical… skills will definitely be required to pursue the projects until the end. Just register and let the contributions guide you.

    Tasks await you

    There are so many ways to contribute!

    Depending on how much time you have and want to dedicate to the Challenge, you will find different options on how to make a contribution. Keep in mind though that all contributions are significant. This is the true strength of collective intelligence.

    As you will have informed the community about your skills while registering to the Challenge, you will be proposed different tasks related to your field of know-how by the platform. It’s up to you to take them or not! The tasks are created by the projects owners and are here to help you fit into the projects and the community.

    Of course, you can contribute to as many tasks as you want and propose solutions, whether someone is already working on it or not. If this is the case, you will work hand in hand together and be all the more efficient.

    You also have the possibility to be more proactive and to create your own project. This can happen any time throughout the 6 months of the season but we advise you to start early, so that you have enough time to go as far as you expect.

    Then, it will be your time and your responsibility to create tasks and offer others in the community the opportunity to become contributors!

    Anyone can be a project owner

    Your project? You’re in charge!

    But you will not be alone in this journey. If you read this, it means that you probably have your own idea on how to make advances in cancer research, following the rules of Epidemium’s challenges “See cancer” and “Foresee cancer”. This is good news! It means you are ready to jump in and do you best with us to fight cancer!

    When you create your project, we will ask you to be the most specific you can about your goal, the data you will use, the licences you will chose… Of course nothing is set in stone but being specific will help the experts of the ecosystem guide you and it will enable you to gather more members around your project.

    This is the key point to keep in mind: whether you start with an existing team or alone, your strength will come from your capacity to engage more people with you. People with different skills than yours, able to handle the tasks that will make your project go forward.

    Seek the snowball effect! The more people with diverse and complementary skills join you, the more attractive your project will become and the further you will be able to go in our common fight against cancer.

    Epidemium’s goals

    As a distributed and open science research program, Epidemium aims to raise its aspiration to the highest scientific level as possible by :

    1. Being a complement to research 2. Fostering scientific publications 3. Integrating an international scientific community