In collaboration with Haukeland University Hospital (HUS) and the University of Bergen (UiB), the Bergen Research Foundation (BFS) has focused on bioinformatics. This initiative includes funding to recruit personnel for five scientific positions at UiB, operational support for the use of advanced medical equipment for personalised medicine and genome sequencing, and the establishment of a bioinformatics service centre for researchers at UiB and HUS; the SAMB Centre for Applied Bioinformatics.
The initiative is linked to previous donations in the form of medical equipment from Trond Mohn and BFS. In order for UiB and HUS to be able to take full advantage of the donations, research, methodology development and user assistance are required. The initiative is interdisciplinary and aims to strengthen Norwegian research and education in computational biology.
The recruitment part of the initiative shall contribute to recruiting five new scientific group leaders for different bioinformatics groups at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences and the Faculty of Medicine. The Computational Biology Unit (CBU) will be the academic unit coordinating recruitment and will be an important driving force for academic cooperation.
Part of the initiative’s funding will go to personalised medicine and genome sequencing. This activity has started well, and since the start in 2017 there has been close to 50 projects anchored by UiB or HUS that have received support by the BFS funds. They cover a wide range of research fields, such as cancerous diseases, hereditary syndromes, tuberculosis, marine pollution monitoring, and research on cod and salmon lice.
Another part of the funding will go to establishing the SAMB Centre for Applied Medical Bioinformatics, and a BFS-supported position will offer services within the field of bioinformatics to biomedical research projects.
Read UiB’s presentation of the initiative here: Major bioinformatics initiative
Nordic Life Science 10.102017
Pushing Bioinformatics Further
The recruitement part in brief:
Project period: 2017-2022
Project leader:Professor Inge Jonassen
Recipient: University of Bergen