Acquisition of Computing Infrastructure for Bioinformatics Research and Education

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Acquisition of Computing Infrastructure for Bioinformatics Research and EducationA grant has been awarded to Dr. Zhiping Weng at Boston University to establish a high-performance, cost-effective computing infrastructure to support the research and educational needs of the University's Bioinformatics Program. Dr. Weng and six co-investigators of this grant form the computational core of the program. Their research spans structural proteomics, functional genomics and gene expression/regulatory networks. On a daily basis they work with all known sequences, all available genomes, all known protein structures, transcriptional levels of all genes in an organism, and the like. Their computational needs far exceed currently available facilities. Boston University is among the first to establish a graduate degree program in Bioinformatics. The program is currently funded by an NSF IGERT grant and has been growing very rapidly. The large number of students in the program places great demand on computing resources.This NSF grant will allow for the purchase of a computer cluster dedicated to Bioinformatics research and educational activities at Boston University. The cluster will have the following components: a file server with 1 terabyte storage, an 80-node compute server with dual Intel 1GHz processors, 2 GB RAM, and 106 GB storage per node, a backup file server and a web server. A fast giga-bit network will connect the file server and the compute server. Such a cluster coincides ideally with the high-throughput, large-scale nature of Bioinformatics research programs.The computer cluster will be able to support innovative research in biomolecular systems including functional genomics, structural proteomics, and cell systems analysis. It will enable the faculty, postdoctoral researchers, graduate and undergraduate students to attack research questions that require months of CPU time, and which could not otherwise be addressed within the constraints of currently available facilities. It will also greatly strengthen our Bioinformatics Program at Boston University, which is dedicated to training a new generation of scientists and biotech industry leaders capable of implementing high-performance computational solutions to the biological problems of the 21st century.