| Institution |
Description |
| The Swiss Institute in Bioinformatics, Lausanne, Switzerland |
The Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics (SIB) was formed in 1998 to create a center of excellence in the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of bioinformatics. The goals of the institute complement those of the BCB program and include: 1) promoting the development of software tools and databases in the field of bioinformatics; 2) sustaining a high-quality research program in bioinformatics; and 3) providing, in collaboration with academic partners, a curriculum of courses and seminars for the formation of research scientists in the field or bioinformatics. The SIB recently inititated a masters degree program in bioinformatics through its association with the University of Geneva and the University of Lausanne. ISU established a connection with the SIB by inviting Dr. Philipp Bucher for a week-long visit to ISU. Dr. Bucher is willing to serve as ISU's liaison with the SIB and to provide ISU students with internships. |
| The University of Bielefeld and The Free University of Berlin, Germany |
The University of Bielefeld and the Free University of Berlin are leaders in bioinformatics education and research in Germany. Both institutions are in the process of establishing Ph.D. programs in bioinformatics, and we anticipate that ISU will have much to share with these universities as they begin advanced training in theis new discipline. Faculty at both institutions are engaged in a variety of research areas that complement the BCB program, including discerning information from DNA sequence data and secondary structure prediction of biomolecules. A particular strength of Bielefeld is their extensive experience in distance education, and Bielefeld faculty have created award-winning courses on biocomputing (http://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/bcd/). Such distance education technology will become particularly important in solidifying collaborations, and we hope to conduct seminars and share research findings over the Internet with all of our partnering institutions. In addition, Bielefeld offers a summer short course in bioinformatics, which may be useful to ISU students. ISU initiated ties with Berlin and Bielefeld by inviting Dr. Stefan Kurtz and Dr. Jurgen Kleffe to ISU. These visits resulted in productive research collaborations and provided the basis for our first student exchanges. |
| Fudan University, Shanghai, P.R. China |
Fudan University is one of the top ten comprehensive, research institutions in China. The Institute of Genetics and the Department of Genetic Engineering were the first Chinese programs to embrace modern genetics. Today, Fudan faculty are deeply involved in the human genome project, and many are affiliated with the Southern Science Center, which is located in Shanghai and is one of two centers in China conducting human genome research. Other research projects at Fudan that complement ISU's BCB Program include the Human Diversity Porject, which maps genetic diversity in indigenous Chinese populations with the goal of identifying disease genes. Fudan is also home to the Chinese rice genome project, which is of interest to many ISU faculty working in agricultural bioinformatics. |
