Brandeis University has a long history in computational neuroscience. This work has been characterizedby the close and intimate relationships between theoretical and computational work, and many of theexperimentalists on this grant (Marder, Lisman, Turrigiano, Nelson) have published numerouscomputational and modeling papers that have illuminated and/or driven many of their experimentalfindings. At present, we have a strong computational journal club that meets every Monday withattendance of about 20 faculty, postdocs, and graduate students, many of whom work in NINDS-fundedlabs. For example, Marder now has 4 postdocs and 3 graduate students who are doing exclusively orpartially computational work, one of whom is now building models of Birren's neurons Lisman has longstandingcomputational projects and Paul Miller, a theorist and new hire, is already in collaborative workwith Lisman, Fiser, Katz and Turrigiano.We believe that our ability to build and analyze computational models is becoming increasingly importantin generating new hypotheses relevant to experimental work. We are now in an era in which reductionistapproaches to biology are being supplemented by efforts to account for system behavior in terms of theirunderlying components. Whether we call this 'systems biology' or another name, it remains the case thatif one wants to understand the interaction of multiple, non-linear processes, it becomes useful, evennecessary, to build models and determine which properties of the system depend on which componentinteractions. For example, the Birren/Marder computational collaboration arose in response of datagenerated in the Birren laboratory that were 'begging' for a model to help understand these data andmake further predictions from them. Therefore, we envision that more and more of our experimentalcolleagues will find it useful to have both computational expertise on campus, as well as a Core facility thatwill be available to run simulations, large and small. The addition of a Computational Core will maketangible our firm belief that computational and modeling work will become increasingly important to all ofour experimental laboratories, and that these facilities be easily accessible and supported.Initially our computational work was done with lab-based computers, and/or small individual clusters ofprocessors. This has two disadvantages: the relatively small number of processors available to any giveninvestigator, and too much time being spent in maintaining too many small clusters. Consequently, anumber of faculty around campus decided, with the advice and help of Dr. Steven Karel, our BiologyComputational Expert, and LTS, the university's technology department, to consolidate the various smallclusters found in neuroscience, biochemistry, and physics, into one large cluster. We are in the process ofdoing so, by taking all of our existing machines and then adding to them new hardware; we expect thisprocess to be complete by the end of 2007. This new computational cluster will need oversight andmaintenance for most effective management, and it will also need periodic replacements and upgrades.Because computational work is so integral to the experimental components of so many of us, we feel thatthis cluster will provide a significant asset to the NINDS-funded research we are now doing, and want toadd this newly centralized facility to this Core grant. This is expecially important to maintainingconsistency in the cluster maintenance and operation.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 67 publications
