The Center for Structural Biology (CSB) was established in 1998 as an institutional and interdepartmental effort to introduce structural biology to the State University of New York at Stony Brook. The CSB is housed on the first and ground floors of the Centers for Molecular Medicine. The CSB is comprised of core faculty from three different departments in the University, which interact closely with each other and several faculties from various departments on campus. Besides supporting the research of the CSB members the center provides easy access to computational facilities for departmental faculty throughout the University.
The aim of the current proposal is to upgrade the outdated and partially non-functional computational equipment that was purchased in 1998 and still forms the core facility in the CSB. The equipment requested consists of three major components: graphics workstations, a multi-processor computational server, and data storage and backup capabilities. The plan is to replace our current Silicon Graphics servers and workstations with a PC-based facility. The advantage is increased performance, lower cost for the equipment and lower cost for maintenance. The facility is supported strongly by the SUNY Stony Brook, which covers 50% of the salary for in the terms of salary for a Ph.D. level computational facility manager. The computational equipment requested will have a significant impact on the NIH supported research carried out by the core faculty of the Center for Structural Biology as well as multiple minor users from four departments on campus.
