The University of Iowa has recently obtained a new grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support the training of new scientists and software engineers in the area of Bioinformatics. A novel aspect of this grant is support for internships and traineeships for Ph.D. candidates to experience the biotech boom from the commercial side as well.
No sector of economic growth rivals the biotech industry, and bioinformatics is often the link from innovation to widespread deployment towards both basic science and biomedical advances. But bioinformatics simultaneously presents an enormous challenge. One need look no further than the rapid advancement of DNA sequencing technologies to realize that scientific endeavor in our universities and national labs is a major driver of economic development and opportunity. The human genome project was only the beginning. As high-throughput sequencing platforms are being applied to mutation detection, mapping and a myriad of other demanding hypotheses, the need for software to support these platforms rapidly becomes apparent. Where do the people come from to fuel this growing area? Traditionally, students will select either a training path in a quantitative field such as math, computer science, statistics or engineering, or they will select a career path in the life sciences such as biology. Until recently, biology has placed far less emphasis on quantitative skills and methods, but molecular science has changed all that.
The National Institutes of Health and other national funding agencies have long provided support to train the next generation of scientists and academics in the US, and today that pattern continues. However, part of this long-standing tradition was to ignore the industrial side of the equation. As more and more complex and quantitative hypotheses become practical from the data collection point of view, a new cadre of engineers and software developers are needed to bridge this gap. This new T32 NIH institutional training grant at the University of Iowa seeks to train both future academics, and practically trained individuals to meet the need for software to bring these new capabilities to bear on the most important biomedical research questions of our day.
Bio::Neos is one of the training partners in this endeavor. This grant is a show of support from both the University of Iowa and Bio::Neos to continue to produce high quality bioinformatics research and knowledgeable professionals from the State of Iowa. We are excited about this opportunity to impact and help train the next generation of bioinformaticians.
If you would like more information about this training opportunity and our goals, contact Steve Davis at Bio::Neos or Prof. Terry Braun at the University of Iowa (http://informatics.grad.uiowa.edu/bioinformatics/)
- Thomas L. Casavant, Ph.D
- Chief Scientific Officer
We recently noticed an interesting article related to strictly bioinformatics companies just like Bio::Neos on the GenomeWeb news website. Please check out this article if you have the time:
Sequencing Service Providers Team up with Bioinformatics Firms to Address Growing Complexity of Data
We will be exhibiting at the 2010 Plant and Animal Genome Conference (PAG), in San Diego California. The conference runs from January 9th - 13th, 2010. If you will be attending, stop by booth #612 to say hello and see what's new at Bio::Neos.
How important do you feel private sector involvement is in training of Ph.D. candidates?
Recommended readings from the Bio::Neos team:
- Loss of Function Mutations in the Gene Encoding Latent Transforming Growth Factor Beta Binding Protein 2, LTBP2, Cause Primary Congenital Glaucoma. by Narooie-Nejad M, et al. Hum Mol Genet. 2009 Aug 4. [Epub ahead of print] (PMID: 19656777)
- Transcriptional regulatory circuits: predicting numbers from alphabets. by Kim HD, et al. Science. 2009 Jul 24;325(5939):429-32. (PMID: 19628860)
- Genetic address book for retinal cell types. by Siegert S, et al. Nat Neurosci. 2009 Sep;12(9):1197-204. Epub 2009 Aug 2. (PMID: 19648912)
