News Release

NC Bioportal workshops to show state’s scientists,
students how to apply computational tools to research

CHAPEL HILL -- Computational tools are playing an increasingly vital role in the study of molecular biology, genetics, protein chemistry and biochemistry research – and in the education of students who will one day become the leaders of these research areas.

In an effort to give North Carolina’s students and researchers the training resources they need, the North Carolina Bioportal was recently launched. In the coming months, the bioportal team will conduct a series of training workshops statewide to introduce researchers to this tool.

The portal, which supports more than 100 computational tools and biological data sets in a standards-compliant environment, is intended for use by the state’s educational and research community. It was developed in part with seed funding from the University of North Carolina Office of the President for development of advanced research and education applications in high-performance computing, information systems, and computational and computer science.

"North Carolina prides itself on its globally recognized scientific community whose developments and research play such a vital role in the state economy," said Robyn Render, UNC vice president for information resources and chief information officer.

"We hope that the NC Bioportal will become a keystone enabler of collaboration spanning the entire state, one that provides new capability in the fields of biotechnology, bioinformatics and genomics."

The NC Bioportal was developed by a team made up of the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Information Technology Services (ITS), the UNC-Chapel Hill Center for Bioinformatics and the High Performance Computing Department at Wake Technical Community College.

During the past year, Dr. Dan Reed, RENCI director and UNC-Chapel Hill vice chancellor for information technology, led the team in combining and extending the best open source solutions for the development and deployment of an extensible bioinformatics portal based on the Open Grid Computing Environment (OGCE) portal toolkit.

"If North Carolina is to compete effectively, both in the United States and in a global market, it must leverage all of its human, intellectual and economic assets," said Reed, also Chancellor’s Eminent Professor at UNC. "The NC Bioportal is a cornerstone of future infrastructure, research and educational models required to foster collaboration and interaction across research and teaching institutions, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and state entities."

The portal capability is hosted at UNC-Chapel Hill for statewide use. In addition, the open source toolkit developed by the project will soon be available for deployment by other research and educational institutions statewide.

"The NC Bioportal is a launch pad for bioinformatics research and education projects across the state," said Reed. "The knowledge gained from use of the portal training tools, coupled with the data made possible from use of the applications available on the portal, will enhance North Carolina’s international competitiveness in biotechnology and bioinformatics."

More information on the NC Bioportal is available at http://www.ncbioportal.org.

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UNC News Services contact: Deb Saine, (919) 962-8415 or deborah_saine@unc.edu