DENVER (Nov. 27, 2006) – Protein structure simulation. Data mining in genomics. A computer program designed to analyze published research findings and identify patterns and relationships. These are just a few of the exciting advancements in the field of biomedical informatics – a field that brings together computer science and medicine to advance research, improve health care, reduce medical errors, save lives and reduce costs.
To assist in the development of this relatively new field in medicine, the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center’s School of Medicine has been awarded a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. National Library of Medicine to train nine students in its Computational Bioscience Program over the next five years.
“Computational approaches are an increasingly critical component of all biomedical research,” said Richard Krugman, MD, dean of the UCDHSC School of Medicine. “This award reflects the excellence of the CU School of Medicine and its computational research program.”
The UCDHSC School of Medicine began offering a PhD in computational bioscience in 2001. A formal program was created in 2004 when the school’s Academic Enrichment Fund contributed $1.5 million to launch the program. Students in the program come from a variety of educational and professional backgrounds including physicians, biologists, computer scientists and engineers. Graduates leave the program with the expertise to join faculty programs in bioinformatics, medicine or computer science, or assume high-level research positions in government or industry.
“Essentially, this field didn’t exist until the human genome project was finished, and now it’s a central part of how we make sense of genomic data,” said Lawrence Hunter, PhD, director of the program at the UCDHSC School of Medicine and one of the founders of the field of computational bioscience. “The Computational Bioscience Program at the CU School of Medicine has come a long way in such a short time. We began a formal program in 2004 and now we have been nationally recognized with the best programs in the world – programs at peer institutions like Harvard, Stanford and Yale.”
The National Library of Medicine, a division of the National Institutes of Health, awarded $75 million to 18 programs for informatics research training. For more information regarding the grant recipients, visit http://www.nlm.nih.gov/ep/GrantTrainInstitute.html.
More information about the UCDHSC School of Medicine’s Computational Bioscience Program is available at http://compbio.uchsc.edu.
The School of Medicine faculty work to advance science and improve care as the physicians, educators and scientists at University of Colorado Hospital, The Children’s Hospital, Denver Health, National Jewish Medical and Research Center and the Veterans Administration Medical Center. The School is part of the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center, one of three universities in the University of Colorado system. For more information, visit the Web site at www.uchsc.edu or the UCDHSC Newsroom at http://www.uchsc.edu/news.