NCI Data Jamboree (Overview)

Overview

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) invites you to participate in a data event, titled "NCI Data Jamboree: Enhancing Data Sharing and Utility to Advance Cancer Research," to collaborate in a small collaborative group setting and solve specific problems using a variety of cancer research datasets. The goals include:

  • Overcoming barriers to finding, accessing, and using cancer data resources to improve diagnosis and treatment options.
  • Promoting interdisciplinary collaborations to expand the size, technical, and scientific diversity of the cancer research community.
  • Promoting the development and application of tools, methods, and pipelines for data harmonization, visualization, integration, and analysis.
  • Evaluating data quality for replication and reproducibility, or AI-readiness of the data.
  • Identifying gaps and limitations of existing data and computing resources.

Dates: November 16 - 18, 2026

Venue: NIH Neuroscience Center Building, 6001 Executive Blvd., Rockville, Maryland 20852.

Format: In-person teams preferred; virtual and hybrid teams allowed.

Why You Should Participate

  • Networking and mentoring opportunities, interdisciplinary collaborations, and engagement with the broad cancer community.
  • Increased visibility of participants' research profiles, and awareness and usage of developed tools and resources to a wider community.
  • Analysis experience gained through handling diverse datasets, producing analysis findings, and exploring potential publication opportunities.
  • Opportunities to provide real-time feedback and suggestions for improvements.
  • Collective documentation of summaries, codes, and workbooks organized and deposited to GitHub for public use.

Who Should Apply
Researchers at various career stages, including principal investigators, postdocs, and graduate students interested in utilizing cancer data as part of their research (ongoing or prospective), are highly encouraged to apply. In addition, college students, citizen scientists, patients and advocates, with interests or expertise in data utility and visualization, bioinformatics, cancer biology, clinical research, epidemiology, computational biology, and other relevant fields, are welcome to apply. Computational expertise is not required to participate. Travel costs are the sole responsibility of participants and/or their associated institutions.

Criteria for Project Submissions

  • Project Teams are highly encouraged to use publicly accessible datasets, either alone or in combination with their own datasets, and jamboree summaries and outputs should be publicly shared.
  • Projects may include procedures and methods in many broad categories touching the data life cycle, e.g., to enhance data interoperability, build specific disease cohorts from clinical features, develop, or validate analysis tools and pipelines, visualization techniques, and AI/ML algorithms; employ informatics tools for data integration and analysis; and/or ways to generate educational tools, data storytelling, infographics, and other creative uses of cancer data.

How to Apply

  • All participants must first register for the event under the "Registration" tab, and then provide information under the "Project Submissions" tab.
  • Participants who wish to lead a project (Project Leads) or those who want to join a Project Team without proposing projects (Project Seekers) must follow the instructions under the “Project Submissions” tab.
  • Deadline for Registration and Project Submission (both required) is July 1, 2026.

Next Steps

  • Once submitted projects (along with individual registration) are reviewed by the jamboree planning committee based on established criteria, applicants will be notified of selection and asked to confirm their availability to participate by early August.
  • The planning committee, in coordination with NCI repositories, programs, and support staff, e.g., Cancer Research Data Commons (CRDC) and Data Access Committee (DAC), will engage with confirmed participatory teams in regularly recurring virtual pre-work sessions (See "Resources" and "Prework" tabs). The goal of prework is to prepare those teams with protocols, documentation, tutorials, and codes to set up necessary accounts, obtain credentials to request data access approvals, and download data or bring data into a cloud workspace upon approval, etc. Participants/teams are expected to arrive at the jamboree event ready to analyze data.
  • Participants who are not principal investigators or an equivalent and thus not qualified to request access to controlled data, such as citizen scientists, graduate students, or postdocs, per NIH policies, will be paired with senior investigators in a team.

Planning Committee (in partnership with NCI programs/Divisions, Offices and Centers, and NIH's Office of Research on Women's Health)

  • Emily Boja, Ph.D., Office of Data Sharing
  • Tanja Davidsen, Ph.D., Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology
  • Sean Hanlon, Ph.D., Division of Cancer Biology
  • Michelle Berny-Lang, Ph.D., Center for Strategic Scientific Initiatives

For questions about the data Jamborees in general or the application process, please contact Emily Boja (emily.boja@nih.gov) and Sean Hanlon (sean.hanlon@nih.gov).