Nexus 2021 Day Two Recap: Empowering Data-Driven Science with Flexible Informatics

Day Two of Revvity Signal's Nexus 2021 Informatics Virtual User Conference delivered another engaging slate of presenters – from Merck KGaA, Birla Carbon and Givaudan to Bayer, Nimbus Therapeutics and Johnson & Johnson.

If you’ve registered but missed a session (or even a day!) – don’t worry! All content will be available on-demand through November 30, 2021.

Keynote Speaker
Day Two of Nexus 2021 kicked off with a riveting keynote by Dr. Sharon Sweitzer, a Director within the Functional Genomics department at GlaxoSmithKline on Capturing Innovative Science for Re-Use – a GSK Functional Genomics Perspective. She shared GSK’s goal of an ‘experiment capture solution’ that simplified the experience for GSK scientists, while also enabling the provision of data for re-use to accelerate drug discovery. Sharon explored how Signals Notebook contributed to their objective. In one example, she cited the decision to create simplified templates for data capture, maximizing the value of their experimental data.

Sharon also described how GSK’s data pipeline now allows for data to be taken out of Signals Notebook for re-use and re-analysis in other systems, including Spotfire®. Signals Notebook delivers very structured data, so it can be put to use very quickly – providing GSK with a competitive advantage.

Industry Talks
The speakers on today’s Research Informatics Track 3, perfectly illustrated the move towards digital transformation. Michelle Sewell shared the story of Birla Carbon’s transition to digital lab notebooks. Birla Carbon had been using paper lab notebooks for more than 160 years! Michelle revealed the unique challenges they faced and how they were addressed across the project lifecycle.

Birla Carbon may stand out for its long-time commitment to paper, but they certainly aren’t alone. Drs. Dieter Becker and Mark Goulding explored Merck KGaA’s implementation of Signals Notebook, with the objective of improving the recording & storage, sharing, searchability and security of R&D data. They described Merck KGaA’s journey from a fragmented landscape of experimental write-up practices to a global rollout of Signals Notebook across R&D in the Electronics Business Sector with more than 2,000 experiments performed since go-live. Dieter and Mark detailed the hybrid Agile methodology and regular workshops with Revvity Signals that were used to address any gaps during implementation.

Givaudan’s Andreas Muheim also shared the implementation journey for Signals Notebook. Among the key benefits of their Signals Notebook implementation was support for 300 users across a wide range of applications – including chemistry, formulation, fermentation, molecular biology, enzyme transformation, processes, sensory science and more. The ELN allowed them to automate data extraction and simplify configurability.

On today’s Technical Track 4, the Head of Data Review and Operational Insights at Bayer, Holger Schimanski, discussed the experience of creating new visualization types using the Spotfire® Mods API. Spotfire® Mods gave Bayer a framework for adding Sankey and Kanban Board visualizations which were needed for reviewing clinical data but were not a part of the standard offering of Spotfire® charts.

Dr. Rebecca Carazza, Head of Information Systems at Nimbus Therapeutics, looked beyond standard capabilities to a combination of data functions and custom web services designed to enhance the data provided to their scientists. Data Functions are used to clean and datatype complex data so end-users can focus on analysis. Nimbus’ Lead Discovery web services framework is used to add a chemical fingerprinting methodology most relevant to their chemistry. Rebecca presented some of the use cases for this approach to improving data handling and improving the end-user experience.

Our final industry talk came courtesy of Johnson & Johnson’s Pieter Pluymers, Manager Clinical Insights who discussed clinical studies in iDARTs. The study files consisted of large numbers of subjects and massive volumes of data which exceeded size limits for the database underlying the Spotfire® Library. Pieter shared how they converted the raw data into Spotfire® Binary Data Format (SBDF) files which Spotfire® can quickly load.

What’s New & What’s Next for Spotfire®?
Spotfire’s® Arnaud Varin pulled back the curtain to reveal some of what is in development at Spotfire®, who partners with Revvity Signals as a premier partner in scientific R & D. The sneak peek included an expansion of Spotfire® Mods to include launching actions in other systems, integrated custom workflows, new visualization mods and AI-powered recommendations for data wrangling, data cleaning and visual analytics.

Technology Innovation Spotlights
Across Day Two of Nexus 2021 were four Innovation Spotlights highlighting real-world applications of key tools on both our Research and Technical tracks. Topics ranged from molecular biology capabilities and applications for machine learning (ML) in support of formulation development, to instrument integration and the recent launch of cloud-native ChemOffice+.

Thank You for Joining Us at Nexus 2021!
Thank you to all of our customers, partners and participants for making Nexus 2021 a success!

If you’ve registered but missed a session – don’t worry! All of this exciting content will be available on-demand through November 30, 2021.