Bioinformatics Programs at Minority Institutions

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The primary aim of this project is to increase minority participation in biomedical research through a broadly based technology transfer program of modern computational bioinformatics techniques used in biomedical research to selected minority institutions, their faculty members, and their graduate students. The proposed program will create new bioinformatics programs at two minority institutions each year and provide significant bioinformatics training at a number of other minority institutions. The proposed program focuses around training in bioinformatics and sequence analysis techniques that allow scientists to make effective use of the vast amount of information being produced by various genome sequencing, gene expression, and macromolecular molecular sequence determination projects around the world. The training will also include an introduction to molecular mechanics and dynamics which will allow the trained scientists to make effective use of homology modeling in order to exploit the structural information available from the protein data bank and to effectively use these powerful techniques for investigating the interplay of sequence, structure, and function of biological macromolecules. The proposed technology transfer program involves three components designed to provide both immediate and long-term increases in the research opportunities available to scientists at minority institutions. The aims for each of the three components are to: create a multidisciplinary core group of faculty at each institution with knowledge and interest in bioinformatics; establish bioinformatics as part of the graduate curriculum at selected institutions; and integrate bioinformatics procedures into the repertoire of research tools used in the laboratories of specific faculty at the selected institutions. The components are: 1) A two week summer workshop in bioinformatics for a faculty teams from minority institutions; 2) Introducing bioinformatics as a permanent part of the curriculum at two minority campuses every year by cooperative teaching of an bioinformatics course with members of the above faculty teams; and 3) A five week research internship for graduate students from the minority institutions who have completed the bioinformatics course on their campus in a project involving at least one of the faculty team members from the minority institution and Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) staff members.