This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. The overall objective of the proposed Core in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics is to provide a world-class facility supporting the research of current as well as future biologists at UTSA as well as the training of our students. The two specific aims identified in the original proposal were to 1) Establish a Bioinformatics core facility and 2) Support Computational Biology. While the software, hardware and personnel involved in supporting each activity are somewhat different ? the essential infrastructure requirements for each are shared, and are therefore described together in the following sections:Considerable progress has been made on the establishment of this core facility. First, we have established an organizational structure, which includes both internal and external advisory committees. Second, we have designed a University-wide questionaire to determine current support needs for faculty and student research. That survey will be administered through the facilities new web-site. www.sa-comp-bio.org. Third, the University has allocated approximately 3,500 square feet dedicated solely to this facility on the first floor of the new BioSciences and Engineering Building slated for completion in the fall of 2005. We have worked with the university to establish a design for this facility which includes specially equiped space for the Beowolf computing cluster, general users space for workstations, conference space for training, data review and collaboration, as well as office space for facility staff, including the director.With respect to personnel, UTSA is now engaged in a nationwide search for a director for the facility. The job description was been posted through the UTSA HR system, and the facility P.I.s have posted the position through many email groups. Applications have begun to be recieved. We anticipate having the director on board in mid-summer.While we are searching for the best possible director, the P.I.s have already begun installing hardware and software to support our basic mission. Specifically, we have purchased two workstations (one supporting Windows, and one supporting the Macintosh opperating system), and have hired personnel to begin installing a wide range of computational software. We have been accumulating and installing relevant computational free-ware on these machines. In addition, software licenses have been securred for the full Matlab service, Genespring service, and Mathematica service. Particular attention has been paid to coordinating our facility to support the data processing needs of the other RCMI core facilities (Imaging, Genomics, Proteonmics) and a committee has been established with representation from these other core facilities to assure smooth coordination. We have recently obtained the Bit Plane software package, which will be important for analysis of data obtained by the imaging core, and we have obtained a service license for the Genespring software package, which we discovered in the process had been purchased seperately by three different UTSA laboratories. Adding this software to the facility saved each of these labs considerable expense and has resulted in better coordination of the use of the software. We have also provided support for the Affymetrix service contract in support of the genomics core facility. Although money is not allocated for purchase of the computing cluster until the second year, we have begun the process of specifying our advanced computing needs, and working with vendors to obtain the best possible computational cluster for the facility. We have engaged the services of Mr. Greg Hood at the Pittsbourgh Super Computing Center, a specialist in parallel computing applications in biology. We have meet with several vendors (Dell Computer, Sun Microsystems) and are working with these vendors for competitive bids. Finally, from April 30 ? May 1st, we organized the first International Biologically Accurate Modeling Meeting in San Antonio, attended by 125 computational biologists from around the world (the US, England, India, Germany, Sweeden, Armenia, Brazil, Mexico). UTSA faculty and student attended and made presentations at this meeting, which will now be held annually in the spring in San Antonio. This meeting will considerably raise the visibility of the RCMI computational Core.
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