Funding is sought for a five-year mentored training period at the University of Pennsylvania for Dr. G.R. Grant to complete the transition from mathematics and computer science to independent investigator in computational biology. Dr. Grant has his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Maryland and his Masters in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania. The principal mentor will be Professor C. Overton (Penn Center for Bioinformatics (PCBI)). The secondary mentor will be Dr. W. Ewens (Dept. Biology). Dr. Grant has begun the transition into computational biology with a two year postdoc in the biology department at the University of Pennsylvania, under Professor Ewens (funded by the National Science Foundation). During this postdoc he has split his time between PCBI and working with Professor Ewens and others on several bioinformatics research publications, and on writing a book on the general subject of statistical methods in bioinformatics. The work plan for the five years is: 1) To continue working on ongoing research project on the statistics of gene expression analysis, disease gene locating, developing genetic databases, and other projects in computational biology, particularly those involving statistical analysis. At least 60% of the working effort will be devoted to basic research of this type. 2) To finish the bioinformatics textbook, being written with Dr. Ewens, and currently half completed. It is expected to take about one year with 20% time devotion. This will involve careful study of several topics in bioinformatics from a basic to an advanced level. 3) To attend courses and workshops in molecular biology, biochemistry, genetics, and other related fields. Roughly one course per semester and one mini-course or workshop per year, for the first three years. 4) To complete a six-month lab rotation, the exact details of which are still to be worked out. This has been informally arranged with Dr. Vivian Cheung (Children's Hospital of Philadelphia).
