New seed grants to grow Monash BDI’s computational biology strength
Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI) is pleased to announce the recipients of the Information Technology (IT) and Monash BDI/Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute (ARMI) Interdisciplinary Research (IDR) Seed Funding Scheme grants. This initiative is set to strengthen our cross-disciplinary capability, while boosting research in computational biology, one of the Monash BDI’s core strengths.
These grants will support new research initiatives in computational biology conducted by three collaborations between the Faculty of IT and Monash BDI, and a fourth between the Faculty of IT and ARMI. All awardees received $30,000.
The lead Chief Investigators (CIs) of the teams are:
- Dr Kim Jacobson (BDI) and Dr Julian Garcia (IT),
- Professor Christian Doerig (BDI) and Professor Graham Farr (IT),
- Dr Traude Beilharz (BDI) and Dr David Albrecht (IT), and
- Dr Mirana Ramialison (ARMI) and Associate Professor David Dowe (IT).
It is expected that the teams’ projects will lead to external grant applications or industry engagement opportunities, as well as increasing the skills of researchers and growing our computational biology workforce.
Professor John Carroll, Director of the Monash BDI, spoke of the strategic importance of the scheme.
“We identified a capability in computational biology as being critical to the success of the Institute. To that end, we worked closely with the Faculty of IT and ARMI to bring this new seed funding scheme into being. This scheme offers us the opportunity to form long-term collaborations and make significant breakthroughs in the area,” Professor Carroll said.
In congratulating the recipients, Professor Mark Wallace, Faculty of IT Deputy Dean (Research), said, “I’m looking forward to great outcomes as we foster these collaborations with the BDI and ARMI.”
Professor Peter Currie, ARMI Director of Research, said “ARMI is delighted to be part of this inaugural scheme to boost cross-disciplinary capability.”
Bringing together biomedical and IT researchers, this scheme is part of a drive by the Monash BDI and the Faculty of IT to boost computational biology and bioinformatics capacity, which underpin the excellent discovery research across Monash BDI’s strategic priorities.
The Seed Funding Scheme was launched in October 2017 at a workshop attended by around 60 people. Twenty prospective recipients gave a three-minute pitch about their proposed research and answered questions. The above four projects were later selected in a competitive application process.
Dr Jacobson’s team will develop an in silico model to test the roles of epigenetic regulators in immune memory formation. Dr Beilharz’s team is creating an innovative way of visualising gene-expression changes, while Professor Doerig’s project will use network-based drug discovery to study malarial parasites. Dr Ramialison’s team will improve the mining of next-generation sequencing to enable the discovery of novel proteins playing an important role in heart formation and heart disease.
Professor John Carroll spoke highly of the quality of applications for the grants.
“The applications were all high-calibre and covered a broad range of cutting-edge topics”, Professor Carroll said.