ASTRONOMY

The University of Melbourne is to be home to the world’s first IBM Life Sciences Collaboratory, which is also the first IBM research collaboratory in the southern hemisphere.

The Collaboratory will bring leading life sciences and computational specialists to the University of Melbourne.

The University, Victorian Government and IBM have formed a world-first partnership to bring the Collaboratory to Melbourne, dramatically increasing the research and supercomputing capabilities of the University of Melbourne-led Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative (VLSCI).

Vice-Chancellor Professor Glyn Davis says the University is delighted to link with IBM to further raise the profile of Victoria – and Australia – on the international map as a life sciences powerhouse equal to the best in the world.

“The outcome of this partnership will be a significant strengthening of the research capabilities of Victoria’s life sciences researchers and a dramatic expansion of their capacity to carry out world-class life sciences research right here in Melbourne.”

“Research into the life sciences in one of the most exciting and important fields of investigation today,” Professor Davis said at the launch.

This latest partnership is part of the larger plan to capitalise on the research talent in the Parkville precinct with the building of the Parkville Comprehensive Cancer Centre and the development of the Institute for a Broadband-Enabled society.

Speaking at the launch Victorian Premier John Brumby welcomed IBM into this partnership which, he said, is going to deliver one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers to our state and dramatically increase our capacities in life sciences. “There is no better place to be doing that than here in Parkville.”

The Victorian Government and the University established the $100 million VLSCI in 2008 to strengthen the research capabilities and outcomes of Victorian life sciences research.

As part of the partnership, IBM will provide a Blue Gene supercomputer which has high-speed and large-scale processing capacity, enabling scientists to address a wide range of complex problems.

“This will place the VLSCI within the top five life sciences computing facilities in the world by 2013,” says Professor Peter Rathjen, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research).

“The partnership will help us to fulfill the VLSCI’s mission to revolutionise computational drug discovery for diseases such as HIV-AIDS, hepatitis C, breast cancer, prostate cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and epilepsy, and ultimately to provide personalised medical treatment based on inherited genetic makeup.

“In addition it will provide leadership in training the life scientists of the future.”