Shift+6: Danielle@Broad Institute

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. I really enjoyed this conversation. I learned about how the Broad Institute (pronounced “brode”) enables genomic research (1:11) and how they manage that much data via a hybrid cloud strategy (11:20). I found their reasoning behind their decision to utilize GCP (13:58) fascinating. They’re at a point where building a federated multi-cloud architecture (17:18) spanning AWS and Azure is starting to make sense. We discussed infrastructure considerations for international expansion (22:23) and how personalized medicine can combat institutional biases (24:33) to create more equitable healthcare delivery. Danielle shares her take on the state of our healthcare system as it shifts under the weight of the pandemic (28:56) and why diversity in building teams (31:51) is so important. We get into what it means to build open-source software (34:08). Finally, Danielle shares resources to dive into for folks getting into the space (39:52). If you’re interested in reaching out to her, find her on linkedin or her website. Danielle, thank you so much for spending your time with us on the show!