Computational Shared Resource for Computational Biology

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The changing focus of medical research has introduced a greater emphasis on mathematical, computational and statistical approaches to biomedicine. These efforts strongly depend on high performance computing and modern powerful computational resources. Several research groups at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, actively engaged in computational research have established a Consortium of Investigators (COI) to develop a high performance computational facility that will be shared by the members of the COI and will fulfill their needs. The COI views the computational facility as composed from several elements: 1) A modern, multipurpose computer cluster that will be able to satisfy the diverse needs of its members. 2) An environment that will provide high quality technical support for software sharing and development. 3) A facility that will serve the educational and training programs of the institution and 4) A setting for developing and nurturing interdisciplinary research collaborations along the lines of the Roadmap described by the NIH. This revised application is to obtain support through the recently announced Shared Instrumentation Grant Program (PAR-08-036) for the purchase of the computer cluster and fulfilling one of the goals of the COI. The consortium comprises a group of NIH-supported investigators engaged in computational research. Their research fields include (among others): bioinformatics and structure prediction, computational neuroscience, computational and theoretical biophysics, data base construction and information retrieval, image analysis and pattern recognition, systems biology and mathematical modeling of signaling pathways, computational structural biology and cheminformatics. Mount Sinai School of Medicine has recognized the importance of computational and mathematical biomedicine in achieving its potential for excellence in translational medical research. To support such efforts it established a Computational Biology Shared Resource Facility (CB-SRF), which is currently based on an Apple G5 cluster that provides only a portion of the computational needs of the members of the COI. The CB-SRF is part of the Academic Computing unit in the institutional library and is co-directed by Roman Osman, the PI of this proposal and the director of the Library, Lynn Kasner-Morgan. The computer cluster of the CB-SRF is reaching the end of its effective functional life span and will soon require a replacement. Thus, this request is timely and of major importance for establishing continuing support to the ongoing computational research at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This revised application is to obtain support through the recently announced Shared Instrumentation Grant Program (PAR-08-036) for the purchase of the computer cluster and fulfilling one the research goals of the Consortium of Investigators. The current computer facility is reaching the end of its effective functional life span and will soon require a replacement. Thus, this request is timely and of major importance for establishing continuing support to the ongoing computational research at Mount Sinai School of Medicine