NIH funds biomedical computing program
Archived article from Sep 28, 2001
By Joseph Blumberg
Rutgers has been selected by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a National Program of Excellence in Biomedical Computing. The NIH is providing a $1.35 million grant to the university over a three-year period to fund "phase one" planning and start-up.
The university is one of only four institutions out of a field of 26 applicants to receive funding under this program. This grant is awarded as part of the NIH's "Biomedical Information Science and Technology Initiative."
"This program is a new strategy for NIH," said Ronald M. Levy, principal investigator on the NIH grant and a professor of chemistry and chemical biology. "It acknowledges that biomedical research has become increasingly dependent on computing to manage and analyze data, and to model biological processes. We saw this in the Human Genome Project with its massive amounts of data and analysis. While the NIH program isn't limited to or directly related to the genome project, it is inspired by the notion that computing now plays a central role in biology."
The phase one funding will enable Rutgers to assemble what NIH calls a Leadership Group, develop an initial research project in biomedical computing that spans a number of different disciplines, set up a graduate training program and provide the necessary laboratory infrastructure for the students.
"An integral part of the NIH Rutgers program is the training of students," said Joseph J. Seneca, university vice president for academic affairs. "The plan is closely affiliated with a new and exciting Rutgers initiative for research and education at the interface of the biological, mathematical and physical sciences. Known by the acronym BioMaPS, this initiative provides for the establishment of a graduate program, graduate courses, undergraduate courses, summer research internships and seminars at this interdisciplinary interface."
BioMaPS began as a Strategic Resource and Opportunity Analysis (SROA) project, part of a reallocation plan that shifts administrative savings to academic priorities.
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