DETERMINING THE PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS

University of Technology, Sydney uses SAS for ground-breaking medical research

For Dr. Simeon Simoff, Professor of Information Technology at University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), SAS solutions represent significantly more than data mining and analytics tools taught to information technology students. They form a crucial platform on which to build innovative and timesaving medical research efforts.With three Master of Science (MSc) and two PhD students – both of whom are using SAS solutions for their PhD work - Professor Simoff partners with The Children’s Hospital at Westmead on a number of research projects ranging from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome to brain tumours.

Research in health
“In medical research,” Professor Simoff explains, “there is an enormous amount of effort that goes into researching areas that ultimately bear no fruit. It’s extremely valuable, therefore, to have the ability to determine the success probabilities relating to individual research paths.

“Using the SAS solution, we have the ability to build models very quickly and, with its efficient model scoring and deployment capabilities, provide researchers with notification of those research paths that have a high probability of success – or failure.”

A feature of the SAS solution that contributes significantly to Professor Simoff’s rapid model development is an integrated process flow diagram environment. By virtually eliminating the need for manual coding of models in many cases, the flow diagram environment has proven to be a major boon in ranking the probabilities of success for specific research paths.

An example of the SAS-based medical research modelling work carried out by Professor Simoff is a recent program seeking a biological explanation of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Using a massive amount of DNA data generated during extensive clinical studies, Professor Simoff and his team of PhD and MSc students built a comprehensive model that determined here was actually no biological reason or the syndrome.

For the medical researchers, this determination has proven to be invaluable. Professor Simoff explains: “Instead of devoting time to a path of research that has a low likelihood of success, they’re able to turn their efforts to other areas that have high success probability rates and this is absolutely essential in any field of research”.

Leading in education
While the use of SAS solutions plays a crucial part in Professor Simoff’s research projects, they also represent the basic foundation upon which to build various key subjects. “We’re finding that data mining and analytics are taking on important roles in an ever increasing array of business applications,” he says. “At UTS, we see it as our responsibility to develop courses that provide students with the skills to support those roles.”

That self-assumed responsibility has resulted in the introduction of SAS solutions to nine undergraduate and postgraduate courses ranging from multimedia data mining for use in security and medical fields, through to the analysis of massive data sources generated by e-business applications.

For the students, though, aside from learning how SAS solutions can be used in an almost staggering number of business applications, there is the benefit of working with the same tools they are more than likely to be using in their future employment.

“The students know all too well that SAS solutions are the current de facto standard in data mining and analytics throughout the world,” Professor Simoff states. “And this is something that makes the courses all the more attractive to them. The skills they gain at university relate directly to those they will need to demonstrate and utilise once they enter the workforce.”

The fact that SAS is so widely used in the corporate environment delivers a particularly valuable benefit to UTS students and, importantly, Professor Simoff’s strong focus on providing students with experience in using SAS solutions beyond the confines of the University. “Our partnership with SAS has given us the means of being able to place many of our students in work experience programs where they apply their academic knowledge of data mining and analytics to real world problems,” he explains.

In commenting further on the use of SAS solutions in the faculty’s courses, Professor Simoff states: “Certainly there are other tools that are used in our courses, but to be quite frank, they all tend to be less popular in the workplace. Our goal is to provide students with the skills that will make them highly employable in the marketplace; and really, SAS skills are fundamental to achieving that!”

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