SCIENCE

PALO ALTO, CA -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced that it has selected Delaware Bioinformatics Institute and Beijing Genomics Institute as Sun Centers of Excellence (COEs). Both sites were chosen for their leadership in computational biology and their potential to advance the field through research and partnerships with other institutions. As Sun COEs, the sites will join Sun's community of academic institutions developing advanced technology to do groundbreaking research. Sun chose Delaware Bioinformatics Institute (DBI) as a COE in high-performance computational biology in recognition of the organization's advanced work on protein structure and biological pathway simulations as well as computerized detection of sequence repeats and SNPs, and whole genome comparisons. Using Sun Fire(TM) 4800 servers, DBI will collaborate with Sun and its partners DuPont and Thomas Jefferson University to create new databases and software for computational biology. "We are very pleased to be recognized by Sun as a COE. Not only does this give us the opportunity to work directly with Sun to further our biological research, it also links us into a rich network of complementary research institutions so that we can all benefit from each other's technological advances," said Dr. Guang Gao, lead professor in bioinformatics at DBI. Sun also chose the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), the leading genomics and bioinformatics center in China, as a Center of Excellence based on its advanced work in genomics, alternative splicing algorithms and proteomics. The BGI team of over 500, with 200 bioinformatics specialists in Beijing and Hangzhou, will use two Sun Enterprise(TM) 10000 supercomputers to study rice and porcine genomes, among other projects. "Computing technology and genomics are both rapidly advancing fields. Working with Sun as a COE will give us the opportunity to put our work at the cutting edge of both of these exciting disciplines," said Dr. Matthew Huang, co-director of BGI. "We are very excited about deepening our relationship with Sun's technology, expertise and partners." "We are thrilled to be working with the Delaware Bioinformatics Institute and the Beijing Genomics Institute, two important leaders in bioinformatics. Through these collaborations, we will put Sun's technology to work at its fullest capacity, continuing to build the tools that can unlock important new discoveries," said Dr. Stefan Unger, business development manager for computational biology in Sun's Global Education and Research Group. Sun's COE program promotes open standards and collaboration to help build new technologies that advance academic research. In addition to BGI and DBI, Sun has already established COEs in computational biology with Virginia Bioinformatics Institute and University of Wisconsin-Madison. Sun is a leading provider of open network computing solutions to colleges and universities around the world, powering academic, research and high performance computing systems, campus administration, digital libraries and student instruction systems. In addition, Sun is committed to connecting the world's students to the Internet, beginning with primary and secondary schools and extending to all levels of higher education. For information about Sun in Education, please visit http://www.sun.com/edu . For more information on Sun's computational biology programs, please visit www.sun.com/edu/hpc