Animal Data Lab (ADL) was founded in 2024 by David Shifley, who wanted to help nonprofits by doing more than donating money and donate time utilizing his professional skill sets in IT.
Passion for Data + Love of Dogs = Animal Data Lab (ADL)
This love for animals, dogs specifically and since he had lost 2 dogs to cancer, led him to reach out to a main university’s cancer research facility asking if he could volunteer with their research data. The conversation led to more research contacts and discussions that showed researchers only had access to small sample sizes, had a lack of usable data for modeling, and a lack of technical resources. This information drove David to a solution to create an open-sourced platform.
Knowing that it would be hard to get researchers to share data to a profiting company, David decided it would be beneficial to start his own nonprofit and the Animal Data Lab (ADL) was born. With the idea to start the dataset for dogs with cancer but being able to expand that to other animals and diseases once the framework was established.