The grant, to be provided over five years by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, will help establish the
Johns Hopkins Program in Computational Biology. The program will have a special emphasis on
cutting-edge genomics research, in which scientists sequence DNA from cells and viruses and
then use that information to solve the far more difficult questions of how cells assemble the larger
molecules and complex structures that make them work.
It will be directed by Michael E. Paulaitis, professor and chair of the Department of Chemical
Engineering in the university's Whiting School of Engineering, and George D. Rose, professor of
biophysics and biophysical chemistry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Graduate students
and postdoctoral fellows from throughout the university will be eligible to apply for the program.
The goal, organizers say, is not to attract new students into biological
research but to give students from other scientific fields and the
engineering disciplines the training and tools to tackle
tough biological problems. For example, computer scientists involved in
gene research must learn
to think of DNA sequences as more than just a series of ones and zeros
in a machine; they need to
understand the biological and chemical processes.
"We want to foster a program that utilizes the formally rigorous treatment that comes out of
chemistry and physics but where the subject matter is biology," says Rose. "The trick is to
produce scientists who can apply these formal techniques but who have the knowledge to
preserve the richness and complexity of biological data."
This change in the way scientists and engineers are trained is
imperative, Paulaitis adds. "We just can't make significant advances or
do the important research we strive to do without this
multidisciplinary approach," he says. About 14 participants
are expected to be enrolled in the new program at any one time; the
first
graduate students are expected to enter in the fall. Their specialized
training will include
internships at the Institute for Genomic Research, in Rockville, Md.
"I expect that the competition to participate in this program will be fierce," Paulaitis says.
"Students recognize this as a new and exciting area of research, and there are many high-quality
labs participating in the program, working on important research problems in this area. This will
be a unique program, so we expect to attract and select the very best students."
Johns Hopkins is among six universities and educational consortia selected to receive these
Burroughs Wellcome grants since 1996, when the foundation launched a program called
"Interfaces Between the Physical/Chemical/Computational Sciences and the Biological Sciences."
"These awards are intended to improve the interdisciplinary training of promising graduate and
postdoctoral students from the physical, chemical, and computational sciences so they can better
apply their unique knowledge and talents to biological problems," says Enriqueta C. Bond,
president of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. "We believe this is the only private program devoted
to bridging the physical and biological sciences through institutional interdisciplinary training
grants, and the awards help fill the gap left by federal funding efforts that are predominantly built
around specific disciplines."
The Burroughs Wellcome Fund is an independent private foundation established to advance the
medical sciences by supporting research and other scientific and educational activities. It was
founded in 1955 as the corporate foundation of the pharmaceutical firm Burroughs Wellcome Co.
In 1993, a gift from its sister foundation in the United Kingdom, the Wellcome Trust, enabled the
fund to become fully independent from the company, which was acquired by Glaxo in 1995.
Related Web Sites:
Johns Hopkins Department of Chemical Engineering:
http://www.jhu.edu/~cheme/
Johns Hopkins Department of Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry:
http://biophysics.med.jhu.edu/
Michael Paulaitis' Home Page:
http://www.jhu.edu/~cheme/faculty/paulaitis.html
George Rose's Home Page:
http://www.jhu.edu/~biophys/Rose/rose.html
