If Kevin Dawson, M.D., has his way, City of Hope researchers one day will access every piece of information they want — and even some they did not know they wanted — with just a few key strokes and mouse clicks.

Kevin Dawson (Photo by Darrin S. Joy)

Dawson joined City of Hope as director of the Division of Research Informatics on Feb. 15. An expert in developing biomedical informatics systems, he aims to improve laboratory, translational, clinical and population science researchers’ access to “every piece of information that is relevant to their studies.”

Dawson’s vision includes developing new electronic systems that will make collecting and interpreting data easier for researchers and administrators at all levels of the organization.

He also seeks to catalog key pieces of data generated by City of Hope researchers and load them into a large database called the enterprise data warehouse.

The departments of Information Sciences and Information Technology Services have been collaborating to create the enterprise data warehouse. It currently holds mostly clinical data. When Dawson and his team complete their improvements, however, campus investigators will be able to easily search the expansive database to find and analyze a wide spectrum of information ranging from the structure of their favorite proteins to the side effects of an experimental drug.

“We want to give control over the data to the investigator,” said Dawson. “With the inclusion of research data in the data warehouse, investigators can even find tissue samples with specific clinical features and specific genomic or gene expression test results.”

In addition, City of Hope researchers continuously produce an enormous amount of information, according to Dawson.

“If researchers want to find anything, they must search for each piece of information in a different place, which can be very time-consuming,” he said. “If we can bring it all into a single ‘metadatabase,’ the search becomes much more efficient.” That improved efficiency will speed research.

“We want to put as much information at researchers’ fingertips as possible,” said Dawson. “By doing that, we help them make the connections that fuel their ideas and move their research — and City of Hope’s mission — forward.”

Dawson reports to Joyce Niland, Ph.D., Edward and Estelle Alexander Chair in Information Sciences and chair of the Department of Information Sciences.

“Kevin brings extensive experience in research informatics as well as the leadership skills necessary to move our initiatives forward,” Niland said. “We’re very fortunate to have him on our team.”

Prior to joining City of Hope, Dawson was director of informatics and chief informatics scientist for the Center of Comparative Medicine & Center of Excellence in Nutritional Genomics at University of California, Davis. He also served as vice president of informatics at Predictive Diagnostics Inc., a Vacaville, Calif., company that analyzed proteins for clinical research studies.

He completed postdoctoral fellowships in biomedical sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., where he was awarded the Fellows Award for Research Excellence.

Dawson received a Master of Business Administration degree in technology management from the University of Phoenix, a Master of Science degree in medical informatics from UC Davis and his Doctor of Medicine degree from Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary.