The Computational Biology and bioinformatics
Environment located at the University of Queensland is funded by a
DETYA Science Lectureship Initiative. The aim of the project is to
develop tools for data mining and visualisation and apply them to
process the huge amounts of data arising from rapid advances in molecular
and cellular biology (genomics, structural biology, gene expression,
proteomics, phylogenetics).
The Centre brings together a multi-disciplinary team
of biologists, mathematicians and computer scientists in an integrated
program of research into plant architecture and further development
of high-performance computing tools for studying spatial dynamics
in biological and agricultural systems.The focus is on the three-dimensional
dynamics of growth by individual plants in their environment, the
physiological and genetic mechanisms underlying this development,
and on the activities of organisms that live on and around plants.
In May 2000, the Queensland Government committed $10
million over three years to develop a visualisation capability and
to further develop supercomputing facilities at the University of
Queensland that would be available to all Queensland based universities.
This attracted $2.5 million of Commonwealth funds via the Australian
Partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC), with a further $2.5 million
of member university matching funds.
In September 1998, the Federal Government announced
its intention to form APAC with a grant of $19.5m over four years.
In establishing APAC, the Federal Government recognised that a national
partnership was needed for Australia to remain competitive in the
development and use of advanced computing systems.
In November 2000 funding for a new UK e-Science programme
was announced, with allocations to programmes within each of the Research
Councils. A Core e-Science Programme was formed as a cross-Council
activity to develop and broker generic technology solutions and generic
middleware to enable e-Science and form the basis for new commercial
e-business software. The Core e-Science Programme was funded by both
OST and DTI and was managed by EPSRC on behalf of all the Research
Councils.