The Scottish Bioinformatics Research Network (SBRN) has been funded over 4 years by SHEFC, SE and SEERAD and involves the universities of Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh. SBRN will provide the infrastructure necessary to enhance bioinformatics research acorss Scotland and so speed the development of new treatments for disease in humans and commercially important crops and animals. The SBRN will build on the research strengths in existing enable existing Scottish bioinformatics research centres to enable them to work together in ways that are currently impossible. These new developments will enable Scotland to lead the world in the development of integrated computational resources for biomedical research.

The driving motivation behind the SBRN is basic research in bioinformatics and computing science and its application to human disease, crops and animals. However, support is not being requested in this proposal for these basic research activities which will continue to be funded at the three academic institutes (Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow) through research council, charity and industrial funding. Rather, funding is requested in this proposal for skilled personnel and computing infrastructure to underpin the basic research activities at the three institutes and to allow the institutes to cooperate more effectively with each other and other Scottish institutes through the use of “Grid” computer technology. While the activities at Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow will continue to reflect the interest and expertise of the principal applicants, support for the Scottish Bioinformatics Forum (SBF) will enable the scope to be widened, through collaboration, training courses, conferences and other outreach activities, to include all in Scotland with an interest commercial or academic in bioinformatics research.

In summary, SBRN will provide:

• Infrastructure support at Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow to support first-rate research in bioinformatics at each academic institute.
• Infrastructure support at the three institutes, to support the sharing of computing and data resources across the three institutes through application of Grid computing
• Outreach and training activities mediated by the Scottish Bioinformatics Forum (SBF.)

TThis project is expected to start on 1st November 2004. For more information on SBRN please contact Dr Richard Sinnott (ros@dcs.gla.ac.uk)

Page updated on the 7th October 2004
Maintained by Susan Andrews