Cole Tindall ’20 advances scientific discovery through data science

Imagine a world in which scientific researchers had access to information about Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, schizophrenia and other conditions, all in one place. Theoretically, they could traverse new scientific ground by making connections between these disparate diseases – and understand their individual complexities.

Cole Tindall ’20 is one of the minds behind the Systems Biology Data Platform, a three-year, $4.8-million project funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). As a bioinformatics specialist at DataTecnica, Tindall is part of the team creating the digital building blocks for the project. Other consortium members include Verily, Technome, Sage Bionetworks, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Their goal is to make data for a range of diseases available for analysis on a singular platform called FAIRplex, designed with the intent to make the data “FAIR” (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) for researchers. The platform will utilize 14 existing datasets from around the globe, collected by the Accelerating Medicines Partnership.

Tindall’s role is to “make all this data harmonized and accessible for scientists to use, to examine ways that inflammatory diseases may contribute to risk of brain diseases.”

FAIRplex is innovative for its goal of integrating multiple datasets into digestible information. The tool will make phenotypic, clinical, molecular and omics data available all in one place, according to Tindall. Having access to this mix of information could enable scientists to make connections about the roles that different aspects of diseases, like genes, play in patient outcomes.

Tindall is currently in the first phase of the project: gathering data from across various Accelerating Medicines Partnership programs to integrate this data and run exploratory data analyses. He also works alongside NIH post-baccalaureate researchers, examining data about topics like microglia, an immune response in Alzheimer’s patients. Soon, he’ll move on to looking at metabolic and immunopeptidome data, so researchers can compare these data types.

One of the upsides of the project is making data about serious health conditions open and accessible for researchers. Scientific data is often kept inaccessible to the researchers who gather it, which can lead to redundancy and longer timelines to scientific breakthroughs, Tindall said.

“That’s really my goal overall,” he added. “As my career has progressed, I’ve noticed that what I’m interested in is making it easier for data to be accessed and making it open.” He cited the response to the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of when making data readily available had a positive impact on public health – the scientific community was able to work quickly to create a vaccine.

Tindall first made the connection that harmonizing various data sources would be positive in the health space during his own post-baccalaureate fellowship with NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. During that fellowship, he worked on a bioinformatics project and realized that it was difficult to find out information about the data he was analyzing. He thought: “Why aren’t there more tools that bring all this data together?”

Before his role at DataTecnica, Tindall was a bioinformatics consultant at Deloitte. He mainly provided data management support in response to the outbreak of mpox in 2022, building out bioinformatics pipelines to help researchers analyze and publish their data on the variants that have been discovered across the globe.

As a biology major at Salve Regina, Tindall was a Rhode Island IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence research fellow. He worked with biology professor Dr. Steven Symington and department chair Dr. Belinda Barbagallo on various research projects, but says the entire Department of Biology and Biomedical Sciences was instrumental in his success.

Salve Regina’s small size and tight-knit community helped Tindall achieve his goals as a first-generation college student from southern Delaware. He believes that the University’s mission encourages the campus community to support one another. “Having that small community and having the support I did at Salve was crucial to allow me to keep going,” he said.