NamSor Applied Onomastics to help Lithuania become a talent magnet in BioTech

LTUWorld reblog

Recognizing names and their origin in global scientific and technology databases allows research institutes and high-tech companies identify where the ‘brain juice‘ flows internationally. What are the main talent magnets (universities, companies) in a particular field? How best can a growing biotechnology industrial cluster retain local talent, as well as attract international professors?

Professor Daumantas Matulis, Head of Department of Biothermodynamics and Drug Design at the Institute of Biotechnology (Vilnius University) said ‘NamSor did a pilot project for us and helped us better understand the depth and breadth of Lithuanian talent deployed internationally, in the field of BioTech and Medical Research.’

Kotryna Stankute, Acting Director at Global Lithuania Leaders (GLL), network of international Lithuania-affiliated professionals, said it is crucially important to each country to be aware about their talent pool based out of the country. A strategy of networking with the world-wide Lithuanian professionals’ Diaspora and their engagement can turn brain drain to brain exchange.

Elian Carsenat, founder of NamSor, said ‘We data mined millions of research articles from PubMed Central® (PMC) to recognize Lithuanian names (or names related to Lithuania). By a happy accident, we also discovered that there exist cultural biases in medical research : a scientist of a given culture or origin is more likely to be interested in a particular topic; some scientific communities are more or less likely to be cited by another community. Such cultural biases could even impact the overall bibliometric ranking of a country’s scientific research. We turned this serendipity into a paper, which will share at the International Congress of Onomastic Sciences (ICOS 2014, Glasgow, August).’

In September 2014, Lithuania will host Life Sciences Baltics 2014, the only international forum in the Baltic region for world-class biotechnology, pharma and medical devices experts worldwide.

About the Institute of Biotechnology
Founded in 1975 as the all Union Research Institute of Applied Enzimology, currently,  the Institute of Biotechnology is mainly involved in research and training in the fields of biotechnology and molecular biology, including research and development of recombinant biomedical proteins, genetic and molecular studies of restriction modification phenomenon, developing of viruses diagnostics, epigenetic study of small RNA, drug design and synthesis, bioinformatics.
http://www.ibt.lt/

About NamSor
NamSor™ Applied Onomastics[i] is a European vendor of Name Recognition Software (NamSor sorts names). NamSor mission is to help understand international flows of money, ideas and people.

NamSor launched FDIMagnet,  a consulting offering to help Investment Promotion Agencies and High-Tech Clusters leverage a Diaspora to connect with business and scientific communities abroad.