Computational Biosciences Initiative

The Institute

UCLA will establish the Computational Biosciences Institute to foster the advancement of bioinformatics, genomic sciences, and translational biomedical sciences, with a focus on the integration of high throughput experiments with sophisticated computational analyses, which will lead to new discoveries and applications in life and biomedical sciences.

Under the leadership of a newly appointed Director, the proposed Computational Biosciences Institute will create the intellectual environmental to integrate research and educational activities in Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, and the David Geffen School of Medicine as well as departments, institutes, and centers across campus to design new methodologies and provide computational support to enhance ongoing bioscience research. This Institute will advance the deep research and new approaches necessary for new discoveries in personalized health treatments, disease discovery, production of biofuels, translation of clinical population data, and management of threatened nonhuman species.

The Institute’s intellectual resources and leadership will be its greatest assets. The faculty affiliates, including newly recruited outstanding computational bioscientists, will be comprised of superb faculty members from across campus from relevant disciplines needed for this transformative field. Associated with the Institute will be the Collaboratory, which will stimulate collaborations between computational and empirical scientists through its Fellows program and offer workshops to teach the new computational tools.

The core activities and some research laboratories will be housed in renovated space in Boyer Hall, but faculty affiliates will be also be distributed in research space among the participating departments. Campus partners will include the Divisions of Life and Physical Sciences in the College of Letters and Sciences, the David Geffen School of Medicine, the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Mathematics, and the School of Public Health. It would also leverage collaborative efforts of numerous other research institutes at UCLA, including the Edythe and Eli Broad Stem Cell Institute, the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, the UCLA Clinical and Translational Science Institute, the UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics and Proteomics, the California NanoSystems Institute, Molecular Biology Institute, The Institute for Digital Research and Education (IDRE), The Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging, The Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM), and the Semel Institute. The Institute’s faculty will have departmental appointments across campus, and will be affiliated with the recently established Interdepartmental Ph.D. Program in Bioinformatics.

For information on the Computational Biosciences Initiative, contact Victoria Sork, Dean of Life Sciences, UCLA College at vsork@college.ucla.edu.