NIH urged to fund centers to merge computing and biology
Malakoff, D.
Science 284(5421): 1742
1999
ISSN/ISBN: 0036-8075 PMID: 10391783 Document Number: 511523
An advisory panel has recommended that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) fund a new network of interdisciplinary research centers to increase the number of computer-competent biologists. Even though the use of computing in biomedical science has exploded over the last decade, with researchers using computers for everything from browsing technical literature to modeling protein folding, few biologists have the computing expertise required to tap the wealth of new data being generated by gene studies and clinical trials. Established in 1998 by NIH chief Harold Varmus, the 16-member panel is led by geneticist David Botstein of Stanford University in California and computer scientist Larry Smarr, director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Champaign. Its 20-page report lays out a detailed plan for the $16 billion agency, the basis of which is a recommendation that NIH create between 5 and 20 biocomputing centers at universities and independent research institutes as part of a "national program of excellence.".