Michigan Integrative Musculoskeletal Health Core Center – Core D Project Summary Diagnosis and management of musculoskeletal disorders is complex and best done with multidisciplinary teams and by analyzing data from a variety of complex sources. Advances in high-throughput ‘-omics’ technologies combined with large volumes of imaging and clinical data have created an unprecedented opportunity to better understand musculoskeletal disorders, improve patient outcomes, and reveal hidden information from clinical and pre-clinical data by applying integrative computational techniques. However, designing integrative models and computational approaches is challenging and requires expertise in omics, imaging and data analysis. The Integrative Data Analytics Core (Core D) of the Michigan Integrative Musculoskeletal Health Core Center (MiMHC) will provide expertise on data analysis in an integrative platform and promote new opportunities to MiMHC investigators by providing access to expertise in computational approaches. This core will be led by a multidisciplinary team of experts in omics, imaging and machine learning methodologies. Core D will provide expertise and scientific guidance in data analysis and help investigators plan well-powered randomized block study designs, interpret results, and provide recommendations for future studies. Core leadership will advise Center investigators on the best tools and methods for analyzing data and provide expertise in developing robust and validated systems using statistical and machine learning techniques. Core services will also include performing the data analytics task requested if Center investigators do not have the expertise. Thus, core services and advice will span the entire project, from idea inception, to data collection and management guidance, and to validated, integrative data analytics models and interpretation. This approach forms a unified model for planning, executing, and interpreting integrative studies across diverse laboratories, thereby enabling investigators to understand the data analytic models and the connection between their data and model outputs instead of just employing a “black box” approach. Thus, this core will accelerate science and generate new hypotheses by enabling individual investigators and broader teams to discover important parameters in the data and how these parameters are associated with study outcomes. Innovation plans include performing integrative analyses across omics, imaging, and clinical modalities using input data from different laboratories and species, thereby creating a novel, unified atlas of musculoskeletal signatures that spans Center investigators. This core will be impactful by developing new data analytics tools and designing new computer aided decision support systems aimed at understanding mechanisms of musculoskeletal disorders.