An EPSCoR (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research) grant
from the National Science Foundation is providing $9 million over the next
three years and will develop an informatics infrastructure at Nebraska
universities in a number of important areas, including bioinformatics.
EPSCoR grant programs are available to states with smaller federal research
budgets and are awarded to enable those states to be more competitive at
the national level.
Ten states competed in the current round of NSF competition and only
six were funded, said Royce Ballinger, Ph.D., director of the EPSCoR program
in Nebraska and principal investigator for the grant. Dr. Ballinger also
is assistant executive vice president and provost for the University of
Nebraska central administration.
The award is the largest NSF grant ever received by the EPSCoR program.
It provides funding for four major infrastructure development components
including bioinformatics, bioinformatics networking, security for information
distribution systems, and resource planning for manufacturing.
“The NSF grant is a wonderful opportunity to enhance infrastructures
and strengthen intercampus collaborations in a wide variety of disciplines,
Dr. Ballinger said. “Nebraska is fortunate to be eligible to compete in
the federal agency EPSCoR programs. The statewide EPSCoR Committee has
done a wonderful job in integrating campus ideas into the NSF grant that
was funded.”
Since Nebraska was designated as an EPSCoR state in 1991, Dr. Ballinger
said the state has received more than $59 million in EPSCoR funding.
The EPSCoR program has truly had a major impact on our state, Dr.
Ballinger said. It has provided valuable funding to allow us to pursue
many different research projects that have been outside our normal range
of funding.
One of the key elements of the most recent EPSCoR grant is to facilitate
the development of the Nebraska Informatics Center for the Life Sciences.
The NICLS will combine the biocomputing resources (computer clusters, software
and databases on biologically important molecules) at three University
of Nebraska campuses (the University of Nebraska Medical Center, the University
of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Nebraska at Omaha) and Creighton
University. This project spans three years and is headed by Simon Sherman,
Ph.D., associate professor at the Eppley Institute for Research in Cancer
& Allied Diseases at UNMC.
A formal proposal to establish the NICLS will be taken to the University
of Nebraska Board of Regents in the near future.
Dr. Sherman said informatics for the life sciences is a field that deals
with biological and chemical information, data and knowledge, along with
storage, retrieval and management to allow for optimal use for problem
solving and decision making. The field has arisen from a confluence of
the life sciences, computer sciences and mathematical sciences.
The main component of the NICLS is a new computing infrastructure for
the storage, retrieval and processing of large sources of biological and
chemical data. The infrastructure will be built on the basis of grid computing
technology and will allow researchers and students from the universities
to use the shared biocomputing resources directly from their workplaces
by logging on to the shared system. Users will access these resources via
the Internet.
Dr. Sherman said the Nebraska universities were previously maintaining
and using only their own research databases and scientific equipment. This
new infrastructure will eliminate the duplication of work as well as the
cost of purchasing and maintaining cutting-edge equipment.
Unfortunately, at present, none of the Nebraska universities can afford
to have access to all of these advanced technologies on their own, Dr.
Sherman said. By integrating our resources, Nebraska will have the chance
to be more competitive in the research arena and for funding opportunities
as well.
The center also will provide maintenance for the hardware and software
of the system, educational opportunities for students and faculty as well
as a forum for research collaboration among the four participating universities.