IBM Collaboratory for Life Sciences, Melbourne
Co-located at VLSCI is the first IBM Research Collaboratory for Life Sciences. The IBM Research Collaboratory for Life Sciences - Melbourne enables collaboration between the 10,000 world-class life sciences and medical researchers in the Melbourne area, and IBM’s computational biology experts, who are renowned for applying high performance computing to research problems in the biological sciences.
The collaboration is dedicated to making dramatic improvements in human health through technology and innovation in medical diagnostics and devices, drug discovery and design, and basic research, underpinned by a deep understanding of disease.
The collaboratory combines data and high-performance computing to model biological systems to enable and accelerate research and treatments for conditions such as macular degeneration, cancer and neurological disease.
Scientists from the VLSCI and IBM Research are working to accelerate the translation of our fundamental understanding of biology into improvements in medical care and health outcomes, with projects in areas such as:
- Medical Imaging: high performance computers are used to analyse images from devices such as MRI, PET and the synchrotron.
- Clinical Genomics: the identification of combinations of genes implicated in disease and the ability to predict susceptibility to disease and treatment outcome from an individual's genome and medical history.
- Structural Biology: understanding the structure, shape and dynamics of biological macromolecules, fundamental to pharmaceutical discovery.
- Integrated Systems Biology: understanding and modelling the dynamic behaviour of complex systems, from genes, proteins, cells, tissues and organs to organisms.
By bringing high performance computing to medical research, breakthroughs in diagnosis and treatment can be achieved much more quickly. What could have taken years or more using traditional computational and wet laboratory techniques may now be achieved in a matter of days or weeks.
IBM Australia | Media Contact | Gisele Boulay | +61 (0)401-713-942 | gboulay@au1.ibm.com