BIOLOGY

ADC announced that the University of Southern California (USC) has selected ADC's TrueNet CopperTen structured cabling system to provide the network infrastructure for a new state-of-the-art Molecular and Computational Biology Building dedicated to interdisciplinary research at the forefront of the life sciences. Please see related story at: www.supercomputingonline.com/article.php?sid=8643. The new four-story building, which falls under the purview of the USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences, cost more than $70 million to build and showcases the university's best researchers in molecular and computational biology. The 100,000-square-foot building includes modernized labs and core facilities that support 10 Gigabit Ethernet applications to help speed the analysis of data and share its scientific insights among researchers. USC's investment in network infrastructure for the new Molecular and Computational Biology Building includes ADC's CopperTen cabling system, the world's first Augmented Category 6 cabling system with the necessary characteristics to enable 10-Gigabit per second Ethernet transmission over a full 100 meters. USC will also install ADC TrueNet Category 6 solution, a high-density 25 pair cross-connect solution. The Category 6-compliant solution is an integral part of ADC's TrueNet solution and has been developed to support emerging applications such as Gigabit Ethernet, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and broadband. "Innovations in information technology are accelerating the pace of discovery in the life sciences," said USC College Dean Joseph Aoun. "The convergence of these fields will revolutionize our understanding of human health and disease." "The College's leadership in fundamental genomics promises to help develop cures for complex diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's," Aoun said. After years of collaborating with colleagues dispersed across campus and in relatively isolated labs, faculty and their students at USC will now be close enough to create a working community of life scientists and the backdrop for the kinds of interaction that lead to scientific discovery. The new building is also essential for ongoing recruitment efforts to attract the most talented life scientists to USC. USC has one of the nation's leading research groups in computational biology, a field that has become critical in the era of genome sequencing. The new building creates, for the first time, a physical space for the USC Center of Excellence in Genomic Science. The center was established in 2003 by an $18.7 million grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute, and coordinates USC's interdisciplinary research efforts in genomics, bioinformatics and computational biology. "Scientists at USC will enjoy the high-performance network functionality and high-speed communications provided by our TrueNet structured cabling solutions," said Pat O'Brien, president of the Global Connectivity Business Unit for ADC. "We are proud as a leading network infrastructure company to enable the ground-breaking research and scientific discoveries that will continue to make USC one of the premiere centers for life sciences in the world." ADC TrueNet Structured Cabling System ADC's CopperTen system is part of the TrueNet Structured Cabling System, a highly reliable, end-to-end system designed to meet the unique network infrastructure needs of enterprises, backed by the industry's only true Zero-Bit Error Warranty that guarantees signal integrity and network throughput. Featuring proven cable, connectivity, and cable management solutions for Fiber, 10 Gigabit Ethernet over UTP, and Category 6/5e from the data center to the desktop, TrueNet is installed in high-performance networks worldwide.