PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT: BIOINFORMATICS AND BIOSTATISTICS (BBC) RESEARCH CORE The Center for the Promotion of Cancer Health Equity (CePCHE) is to provide centralized management, support, specialized technical services, and evaluation for advancing investigators, and creating a sustained integrated basic research development and support center. To accomplish this aim, the CePCHE will establish a much- needed Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Core (BBC) to strengthen and improve the University of Puerto Rico’s (UPR) limited infrastructure in cancer research. The goal of the BBC is to serve as an expert hub to address bioinformatics and biostatistics for the CePCHE’s Research Projects Leaders (RPLs) as well as pipeline and early-stage investigators invested in cancer research. To accomplish this goal, the BBC has established the following specific aims: (1) To implementation, data analysis, provide biostatistical assistance and support for study design methodology, and interpretation of biomedical data; (2) Provide bioinformatics support in predictive analytics (artificial intelligence and machine learning), and computational support (software tools and application programming interfaces or APIs); (3) Establish a computational infrastructure suitable for big-data analyses, and data repository for data collection, curation, annotation, management, and storage of primary and secondary databases; and (4) Establish and strengthen working relationships and a training portfolio of the BBC with other IDeA institutions. Additionally, the BBC will support and train RPLs and other promising junior investigators addressing the CePCHE’s theme in data processing, management, and analysis. The BBC will play a leading role in the creation, collection, and maintenance of a shared Data Repository to expand the immediate access of UPR faculty to these multiple data sets and resources. It is expected that the BBC will provide a solid infrastructure for CePCHE’s RPLs to expedite their research, publish results in a timely manner in high impact peer-reviewed journals, and prepare and submit competitive R-type proposals within three years of initiation of the CePCHE. OMB No. 0925-0001/0002 (Rev. 03/2020 Approved Through 02/28/2023) Page Continuation Format Page