BioHub on AI for Medicine – Biohub on AI for medicine and multimodal bioinformatics
Hosting Entity: UniMORE Al Center and IRCCS Sant’Orsola
Partners: University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Managing Legal entity); Sant’Orsola Hospital; Modena Technopole
Mission and Strategic Focus
The BioHub on AI for Medicine and multimodal bioinformatics acts as a regional competence hub for Artificial Intelligence and Bioinformatics. It focuses on integration and analysis of biomedical images, omics, and multimodal medical data.
It supports centralized and federated data analysis approaches for scalable, interoperable, and secure biomedical research and healthcare applications
CORE PILLARS:
- Research & Innovation Alignment: Support to research, innovation, and technology transfer aligned with STEP priorities.
- Advanced Data & Computational Methods: Development of computational methods for both omics and non-omics data.
- AI-Driven Healthcare Applications: Enabling applications in personalized medicine, digital health, and telemedicine.
- Ecosystem Integration & Support: Providing vertical specialization in AI technologies and transversal support to the BioHubs4STEP network and regional ecosystem; Positioning the BioHub as a regional reference point for Big Data and AI in medicine
Through the active involvement of its partners in co-designing services and projects, the overall goal is to become a regional reference point for Big Data and AI in medicine, generating technological, economic, and social impact.
IMPACT:
- Technological: Acceleration of AI-based solutions in healthcare, Advancement in data-driven medical research and innovation, Improved integration of omics and clinical data.
- Economic: Strengthened regional innovation ecosystem, Increased technology transfer and commercialization opportunities, Attraction of investments and talent in AI and health tech.
- Social: Enhanced patient outcomes through personalized medicine, Greater access to healthcare via digital health and telemedicine, Improved efficiency and sustainability of healthcare systems.
Infrastructure
The BioHub, supported by UNIMORE, IRCCS Sant’Orsola and the Tecnopolo di Modena, builds on integrated infrastructures and multidisciplinary expertise to foster innovation, technology transfer, and AI-driven biomedical research. It leverages a connected regional ecosystem of resources and competences.
KEY ASSETS:
- Research & Training Infrastructure
- Dedicated spaces for research and advanced training activities
- Highly qualified staff in AI, bioinformatics, and data modelling
- Strong institutional support for innovation and technology transfer
- High-Performance Computing Infrastructure
- GPU cluster with 25 servers and over 100 GPUs (~4 PFLOPS)
- SLURM-based workload management system
- 500 TB RAID6 storage with 25GbE connectivity
- Access to national HPC (CINECA, Leonardo) and integration with BO.S.CO. for secure genomic and multi-omics data analysis supported by INFN
- Capabilities & Applications
- Advanced bioinformatics, computational genomics and multi-omics analysis
- AI-driven and data-intensive research using centralized and federated workflows
- Scalable multimodal biomedical data processing for clinical and research applications
OUR SERVICES
R&D and Innovation Support
- Guidance on research opportunities
- Data management strategies
- Regulatory and IP support
- Project design and development
Contractual Research Services
- AI-based biomedical data analysis
- Omics data processing
- Machine learning model development
- Integration of heterogeneous datasets
Facility / Lab Access
- Access to Technopole of Modena facilities to support research, collaboration and training activities
- Access to the Computational genomics unit at IRCCS Sant’Orsola
- Access to computational environments for AI and bioinformatics
Entrepreneurship support
- Early-stage mentoring
- Business and technology validation
- Connections with innovation ecosystem
- Facilitate access to external incubation and acceleration programs
Technology Transfer Services
- Support for translating research into applications
- Identification and valorisation of results
- Development of exploitation strategies
- Facilitation of interactions with research centres, laboratories and innovation actors
Training and Capacity Building
- Courses, workshops, seminars on AI, bioinformatics, data integration
- Mentoring and knowledge-sharing activities
Internationalisation Support
- Participation in national and international conferences and networking events
- Matchmaking with stakeholders
- Support for partnerships
Science communication
- Public engagement
- Dissemination activities
- Collaboration with non-profit organizations
INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATIONS & PARTNERSHIPS
The BioHub builds on a network of well-established European research collaborations that strengthen its activities iin AI-driven bioinformatics, systems biology and multimodal biomedical data analysis. These partnerships foster joint research, methodological innovation, and scientific exchange, directly contributing to the advancement of artificial intelligence, multimodal data integration, and personalized medicine.
KEY PARTNERSHIPS:
- University of Helsinki
- Systems Biology of Drug Resistance in Cancer Lab
- University of Copenhagen
- Collaboration with the Genome Data Science Lab, involving IRB Barcelona
- Institut Curie
- Biologie des Systèmes du Cancer unit
- Institut Pasteur
- Computational Systems Biomedicine Lab
- Barcelona Supercomputing Center
- Development of AI federated infrastructure
These collaborations contribute to joint research activities, methodological development, and scientific exchange, directly supporting the BioHub’s objectives in advancing artificial intelligence, multimodal data integration, and personalized medicine. At present, all partnerships are based on active project-driven cooperation.
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