Our approach

We are committed to advancing single-cell science by making it accessible and empowering fellow scientists to dive into their data one cell at a time.

It is essential to closely pair biological understanding with computational expertise, especially with the ever-increasing scale of data generation. By harnessing single-cell science both as a scientific resource and an organizing principle, we aim to establish an open pediatric research community that accelerates solutions within an interdisciplinary framework. The Network's activities are focused on teaching, enabling, and sharing critical analytical knowledge and skills in single-cell science with the Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH) community and beyond. Additionally, it will ensure the utmost respect for pediatric participants and their families, as researchers and clinicians will be empowered to comprehensively examine each individual sample.

Our questions

Here are some of our guiding questions defining how we think about science and going about scientific discovery.

What is a cell type?

Can we predict the course of a disease?

Can we demystify poorly understood diseases?

Where does a cell come from and where is it going?

Which treatment will work best?

How do cells communicate?

How does genetic variation impact our cells?

Our Values

Teamwork

To promote scientific discovery by building a community to share biological and technical expertise to accelerate research.

Respect

We respect each patient by maximizing the information extracted from each sample. We measure all the genes from every cell type so that each biopsy is analyzed to the fullest extent.

Open Research

Promote open source research both in data sharing and accessibility using FAIR principles and sharing code and reproducible workflows.

Diversity

Advance equity and diversity in science by promoting scientists and gathering data from diverse cohorts.

Integrity

Embody ethical principles and integrity while striving to deliver excellence.

Innovation

Embrace an openness to change and adopt cutting edge tools and workflows to unravel biology.