UCI research group awarded four grants

Deepa Bharath

The university’s Institute for Genomics and Bioinformatics has been

awarded four grants totaling nearly $7 million bringing the total

money it has raised since its inception about two years ago to $15

million, officials said on Friday.

Pierre Baldi, a computer scientist, and Wesley Hatfield, a

microbiologist, founded the institute about 15 months ago.

The institute’s goals are closely linked with the U.S. Human

Genome Project started 13 years ago by the U.S. Department of Energy

and the National Institutes of Health. The project’s primary goal of

identifying all the 30,000 genes in the human body has been

successfully accomplished.

This type of research, in addition to knowledge of biology,

requires computation skills as well, said G. Wesley Hatfield, the

institute’s associate director and professor of microbiology and

molecular genetics in UCI’s College of Medicine.

“This research calls for interpretation and analysis of huge

amounts of data which requires the knowledge and skills only a

computer scientist can provide,” Hatfield said. “Together, computer

scientists and biologists can do what we need to do to understand

life processes.”

The grants includes a five-year $4.9 million award from the

Frontiers of Integrative Biological Research program, a new one

created by the National Science Foundation. This grant was given to

Eric Mjolsness, an associate professor at UCI’s School of Information

and Computer Science.

The four grants will help the institute fund its 150 researchers

and provide for equipment such as a “supercomputer.” That computer,

said Hatfield, has 140 processors compared to one processor that a

desktop computer has. One example of the work the institute does,

Hatfield said UCI researchers had created, was a “synthetic SARS

gene” a week after officials released information about the genetic

makeup of the virus.

“This is a new era in research,” he said.

This intersection between life science and computer science is

very important for such research, said Baldi, the institute’s

director a professor in UCI’s School of Information and Computer

Science.

“This is a field of research that’s growing very quickly,” he

said. “This is going to help us design new medicines and proteins.”

The computers, which imitate biological systems and create complex

simulations, will help scientists skip several experiments, saving

time, money and effort, Baldi said.

Part of the grants will also be used to “train the next generation

of scientists,” he said.