Fairbanks, Alaska-- The Arctic Region Supercomputing Center (ARSC) and the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) announced today the establishment of a new partnership with the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB), located in Seattle Washington. The affiliation will allow the centers to establish cross-institute faculty appointments and facilitate the sharing of information and technology. The agreement will advance ARSC and UAF into the field of computational biology--while providing ISB with the computational power and know-how needed to tackle their enormous data sets.

"This alliance between the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center at the University of Alaska and the Institute for Systems Biology brings significant strength in supercomputing to the intense computational needs of the ISB in genomics and proteomics," said Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska). "This partnership is an ideal blending of interdisciplinary skills and opportunities from each institution. Dr. Leroy Hood, a world-class medical researcher and founder of ISB, will add significantly to the University of Alaskas research program."

Through the sharing of information and resources with ISB, ARSC and ISB will have the opportunity to recognize immediate mutual benefits by beginning to explore the use of unique hardware features in computing platforms that enable rapid pattern matching to discover gene homologies, analyze proteomics data and develop and share visualization solutions. The partnership will broaden the scope of research that is already being conducted at ARSC. Current areas of research include climate modeling, ocean/ice coupled modeling, space physics and geology.

"This partnership brings together a world-class supercomputing facility with a world-class leader in the rapidly growing field of genomic research," said University of Alaska President
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Contact: Jenn Wagaman
wagaman@arsc.edu
907-474-6551
University of Alaska Fairbanks
1-Aug-2001