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DOE Establishes Institutes for the Advancement of Computational Biology Research & Education

The Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) of the Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), has created three institutes for the advancement of computational biology research and education, in support of the ASCR computational biology program, the ASCR-BER (Office of Biological and Environmental Research) DOE Genomics:GTL program, and the broader Office of Science research programs.

The institutes will support the advancement of computational biology research as an intellectual pursuit and will provide innovative approaches to educating biologists as computational scientists. The institutes will focus on advancing computational biology research and education as counterbalancing and complementary activities to experimental biology.

The institutes will utilize interdisciplinary teams of researchers, drawn from the physical and life sciences, computational mathematics and computer science. Two of the institutes are collaboratory efforts between universities and national laboratories.

The three institutes are

  • Institute for Multi-Scale Modeling of Biological Interactions at Johns Hopkins University
  • Center for Computational Biology at University of California, Merced
  • BACTER Institute at University of Wisconsin, Madison
Institute for Multi-Scale Modeling of Biological Interactions
Johns Hopkins University in conjunction with the University of Delaware and Los Alamos National Laboratory

  • Focus: To study biological systems across multiple scales of time and length, ranging from protein interactions at the molecular level to the behavior of complex biochemical networks in entire organisms.
  • More Information
  • Web Site
Center for Computational Biology
University of California, Merced; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

  • Focus:
    • To sponsor multidisciplinary scientific projects in which biological understanding is guided by computational modeling
    • To facilitate the development and dissemination of undergraduate and graduate materials based on the latest computational biology research
  • More Information
  • Web Site
BACTER (Bringing Advanced Computational Resources To Environmental Research) Institute
University of Wisconsin, Madision

  • Focus:
    • to find the genes, transcribe the proteins, predict the folds, perform pairwise docking of the model structures, deduce pathways, and ultimately construct whole cell models of Rhodobacter sphaeroides and Shewanella oneidensis.
    • to engage students in project-oriented computational biology research through three interdependent research tracks: Genomics and Biological Pathway Analysis; Protein Dynamics, Folding, and Docking; and Macrobiological Modeling.
    • to train students to uncover biological mechanisms and pathways within these microbial organisms through the use of computational biology and synergistic collaborations with experimental groups.
  • More Information
  • Web Site: http://www.bacter.wisc.edu

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