Lauren Becnel, Ph.D.
Lauren Becnel, Ph.D. is the technical lead for NURSA and provides program management and direct supervision of NURSA
biomedical informatics staff members. Dr. Becnel is also the Director of the Biomedical Informatics Group of the
NCI-Designated Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center and Co-Director of its Biostatistics and Informatics Shared Resource
with appointments as an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Molecular and Cell Biology. She has
been Informatics PI or Technical Lead on a number of national and regional multi-institutional consortium projects
including the BCM site repository of the AIDS and Cancer Specimen Resource
(
www.acsr.org), dkCOIN NIDDK cloud-based data sharing project
(
www.dkcoin.org), and the Prostate SPORE Biomedical
Informatics Network. She also serves on the Advisory Panel for the CDISC (Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium)
BRIDG Model and Biomedical 'Omics Research Group of the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities.
Yolanda Darlington, Ph.D.
Yolanda Darlington, Ph.D., is the biomedical informatics project manager of the NURSA Bioinformatics Hub and is
responsible for organizing and leading efforts of the development team by monitoring day-to-day project progress,
scope, timelines, and work product delivery. She works with the Co-PIs, Curation faculty, Dr. Becnel, NURSA Beta
Testing Team and other key stakeholders to capture software requirements and communicates these to the development
team using an adapted Agile development strategy. She received her PhD in cell and molecular biology.
Apollo McOwiti, M.S.
Apollo McOwiti, M.S., is a senior Java Enterprise Edition software engineer and information architect, with
considerable experience in the design and implementation of software service oriented architecture. He is responsible
for converting software requirements from Dr. Darlington into architecture documentation for the NURSA developer team.
Mr. McOwiti holds a Master’s degree in Chemistry, with over 15 years’ experience with Java Enterprise, SOA, and
enterprise architecture.
Wasula Kankanamge
Wasula Kankanamge is a web developer who specializes in Node.js, JavaScript, jQuery, Bootstrap and other user interface
technologies. He acts as the user interface and experience developer for NURSA who also designs and implements data
visualization components for the Hub and its tools. Mr. Kankanamge brings over eight years’ experience to the project.
Alexey Naumov
Alexey Naumov is a Java Enterprise Edition software engineer with experience in data aggregation, integration through
ETL (extraction, transformation and loading), analysis and mining. He utilizes software architectural specifications
from Mr. McOwiti to enhance existing and develop new components of the NURSA Hub and modules within its toolsets.
xMr. Naumov has over 5 years’ experience in JEE programming, enterprise technologies and relational/NoSQL database experience.