UCL to benefit from £8.9m medical bioinformatics grant

The Minister for Science and Universities, the Rt Hon David Willetts, announced today that the Medical Research Council (MRC) has made an investment of £8.9 million to a consortium of institutions, comprising UCL, Queen Mary University of London, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the Francis Crick Institute, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the European Bioinformatics Institute. The grant was given for Medical Bioinformatics: Data-Driven Discovery for Personalised Medicine . The funding will be used to create 'eMedLab', a shared offsite datacenter. This high performance computing cluster will allow scientists to analyse human genome data and medical images, together with clinical and other physiological and social data, for the benefit of human health. The collaborative resource will be shared by UCL, Queen Mary University London, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the Francis Crick Institute, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the European Bioinformatics Institute. In bringing together a number of world-leading biomedical research institutions this award will accelerate the translation of genomic advances into clinical practice. Sir John Tooke, UCL Vice-Provost (Health) The funding will also support the recruitment of four career development fellows or junior group leaders to form a Research Academy.