Shift+6 2: Danielle Ciofani, Broad Institute

September 16, 2020
James Lloyd CTO & Co-founder

Today’s guest is Danielle Ciofani. A data architect turned strategist, she leads the Broad Institute’s Data Sciences Platform team maximizing the impact of data science on the biomedical ecosystem. She also cares deeply about the startup community and serves as a mentor to early-stage companies at the intersection of healthcare and data.

Prior to these roles, Danielle designed, built, and grew the largest integrated real-world database of clinical and claims data at Humdecia which was eventually acquired by Optum.

If you’re interested in reaching out to her, find her on Linkedin.

Danielle, thank you so much for spending your time with us on the show!

Key Moments

01:11 – how the Broad Institute (pronounced “brode”) enables genomic research
11:20 – how they manage that much data via a hybrid cloud strategy
13:58 – the reasoning behind their decision to utilize Google Cloud Platform
17:18 – how they are building a federated multi-cloud architecture
22:23 – infrastructure considerations for international expansion
24:33 – how personalized medicine can combat institutional biases to create more equitable healthcare delivery
28:56 – Danielle shares her take on the state of our healthcare system as it shifts under the weight of the pandemic
31:51 – why diversity in building teams is so important
34:08 – what it means to build open-source software
39:52 – Danielle shares resources to dive into for folks getting into the space

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