Professor Peter John Hunter, founder of the Auckland Bioengineering Institute and a key member of the SPARC community, to be appointed a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to medical science.
The New Zealand Order of Merit is awarded to those “who in any field of endeavour, have rendered meritorious service to the Crown and the nation or who have become distinguished by their eminence, talents, contributions, or other merits” and is internationally acknowledged as the mark of exceptional accomplishment.
Professor Hunter is the Principal Investigator for the mapping core of the SPARC Data and Resource Center, which contributes key data organization and spatial representation allowing the scientific community to access data and models associated with the autonomic nervous system in a manner that conforms to FAIR principles.
What is SPARC? The SPARC Portal is an open neuroscience and systems physiology platform containing multi-species data, knowledge, computational modeling and spatial mapping.
Throughout his career, Professor Hunter has pioneered efforts to create organ-specific computational tools for clinicians. He promoted and later chaired The Physiome Project in the 1990’s, then moved on to co-found and serve as the first Director of the Auckland Bioengineering Institute (ABI) at the University of Auckland. His team collaborated with the German research organization Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft to design an “intelligent arm brace” that employs electrical sensors that respond to movement. The “12 Labours” project at ABI aims to create a “digital twin”, or computational model, for each of 12 organs in the body.
Dr. Hunter has continuously pushed the SPARC effort forward by focusing on data integration and the ability to look at these data in context of a larger anatomical and functional connectome. This ability has positioned SPARC and the SPARC data beyond other efforts in this domain.
A rare individual who combines a visionary scientific mind with a humble, collaborative approach to leadership, Professor Hunter has changed the scientific and clinical landscape. Join SPARC in congratulating him on this new honor.
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Osanlouy M, Bandrowski A, de Bono B, Brooks D, Cassarà AM, Christie R, Ebrahimi N, Gillespie T, Grethe JS, Guercio LA, Heal M, Lin M, Kuster N, Martone ME, Neufeld E, Nickerson DP, Soltani EG, Tappan S, Wagenaar JB, Zhuang K, Hunter PJ. The SPARC DRC: Building a Resource for the Autonomic Nervous System Community. Front Physiol. 2021 Jun 24;12:693735. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2021.693735. PMID: 34248680; PMCID: PMC8265045.
The SPARC Data and Resource Center has more than seven years of experience working together to create tools and procedures to assist in the organization and transparency of experimental data. However, many of our members bring decades of data sharing experience to SPARC. A key factor in making SPARC datasets FAIR is to align and harmonize data, using known, well-structured standards, so they can be understood, no matter the research project or experiment. This includes: 1. clear and consistent data structure; 2. open data formats; and 3. detailed and accessible methods. The SPARC DRC receives funding from the NIH Common Fund Program, SPARC, which stands for Stimulating Peripheral Activity to Relieve Conditions. It comprises a large consortium of investigators focused on basic and translational science in a number of organs and species. The long term goal is to generate innovative ideas and technologies for novel bioelectronic therapies by creating the opportunity for unique analyses and discovery. Interested in utilizing SPARC? Find out more here.
The SPARC Portal is an open neuroscience and systems physiology platform containing multi-species data, knowledge, computational modeling and spatial mapping. The goal of the SPARC Portal is to harmonize multiple types of data (also from multiple species) into a cohesive whole, and organize and display it in a way that is useful to both the SPARC science community and the medical device companies. Data, models and knowledge can be examined at all scales and generate predictive multiscale models (solved with simulation tools provided through the Portal) to answer specific questions associated with the autonomic control of the visceral organs.
Disclaimer The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
