December 1, 2009
LA JOLLA, CA—The Salk Institute for Biological Studies has received a $4.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to build a state-of-the-art data center that will dramatically increase its research computing power for the next decade.
Only one of two such construction grants awarded in California and 14 nationwide, Salk’s latest grant is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which was designed to immediately create jobs and lay a foundation for a robust and sustainable economy through infrastructure modernization projects.
“This NIH grant comes at just the right time considering Salk’s growing strength in computational neurobiology and studies in epigenetics, fields of research that require intense computing power,” said Salk’s President William R. Brody. “Having a modernized data center with the ability to compute and store hundreds of terabytes of information opens the door to a new level of scientific exploration and discovery at the Salk.”
While the Salk Institute’s traditional strength has been in “wet-bench” molecular and genetic research, its influence in computational biology has grown in recent years. Salk investigators now apply increasingly powerful computational approaches, such as neurobiological modeling, to answer an array of research questions.
The Institute’s Crick-Jacobs Center for Computational and Theoretical Biology, the Razavi-Newman Center for Bioinformatics, and the Waitt Advanced Biophotonics Center tie a core of computer-based studies to the more traditional bench research efforts.
About the Salk Institute for Biological Studies:
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is one of the world’s preeminent basic research institutions, where internationally renowned faculty probe fundamental life science questions in a unique, collaborative, and creative environment. Focused both on discovery and on mentoring future generations of researchers, Salk scientists make groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of cancer, aging, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and cardiovascular disorders by studying neuroscience, genetics, cell and plant biology, and related disciplines.
Faculty achievements have been recognized with numerous honors, including Nobel Prizes and memberships in the National Academy of Sciences. Founded in 1960 by polio vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk, M.D., the Institute is an independent nonprofit organization and architectural landmark.
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