Recent advances in DNA sequencing techniques have unlashed a wealth
of genomic data, and it is now clear that computational hardware and
software is not designed with the complexity and size of this data
in mind. Accordingly, I have taken a number of steps at the University
of Sydney to redress this issue.
In 1999, I co-founded the University of Sydney Bioinformatics Supercomputing
Facility (USBSF), with colleagues from the University of Sydney,
and generous funding from the University of Sydney, eBioinformatics,
and Sun Microsystems. The USBSF is a Beowulf cluster housed at the
Australian Genomic Information Centre (AGIC). It is dedicated to
the exclusive use of staff and students at the University of Sydney
for teaching and research in the development and use of bioinformatics
applications.
In 2001, I also co-founded the Sydney University Biological Informatics
and Technology Centre (SUBIT), with colleagues from the University
of Sydney, in order to strengthen the University of Sydney's position
in newly emerging disciplines, such as genomics, proteomics, pharmacoinformatics,
phylogenetics, medicine, and biodiversity assessment. When fully
developed, SUBIT will be located in the Medical Foundation Building.
SUBIT will be staffed by at least six academics, including a Chair
in Bioinformatics, who all will have joint appointments in SUBIT,
and in other departments within the Faculties of Science and Medicine.
Apart from this, I am involved in a number of collaborative
research adventures that aim to develop visualisation procedures
for surveying genomic data and computer programs for maximum likelihood
inference of phylogeny.
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