Fuat Akal

Life Sciences Data Management in a Research Center
Dr. Fuat Akal, Hacettepe University Department of Computer Engineering, Ankara, Turkey

Abstract. Managing data in a life sciences research environment is troublesome. Data is often maintained by the users themselves in a chaotic and globally unstructured way. Central data integrating and access control concepts are usually missing. Interaction of heterogeneous groups of scientists is limited. B-Fabric is a system developed at Functional Genomics Center Zurich (FGCZ) to solve all these issues. This talk presents highlights of B-Fabric as well as some experiences made while running such a system in daily business.

Bio. Dr. Fuat Akal was born in Turkey. He studied computer science at Hacettepe University where he obtained his BSc and MSc degrees. He received his PhD from the Computer Science Department of ETH Zurich. He was a member of the Database Research Group there. He then joined the University of Basel (UNIBAS) Computer Science Department Database and Information Systems and worked with the Data Integration and IT team at the Functional Genomics Center Zurich. He is currently with the Computer Engineering Department at Hacettepe University.