Stories
iPlant Collaborative awarded $50 million grant
The collaborative, based in the UA’s BIO5 Institute, includes a significant information technology component overseen by McClelland Professor of MIS Sudha Ram.
At the iPlant Collaborative announcement: McClelland Professor of MIS Sudha Ram, Eller College dean Paul Portney, and BIO5 director Vicki Chandler.
January 30, 2008
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a University of Arizona–led team $50 million dollars to create a global center and computer cyberinfrastructure within which to answer plant biology's grand challenge questions, which no single research entity in the world currently has the capacity to address. The project will unite plant scientists, computer scientists and information scientists from around the world for the first time ever to provide answers to questions of global importance and advance all of these fields.
The five-year project, dubbed the iPlant Collaborative, potentially is renewable for a second five years for a total of $100 million.
“This global center is going to change the way we do science,” says UA plant sciences professor and BIO5 member Richard Jorgenson, PhD, who is the lead investigator and director of the iPlant Collaborative. “We’re bringing many different types of scientists together who rarely had opportunities to talk to one another before. In so doing, we’ll create the kind of multidisciplinary environment that is necessary to crack the toughest problems in modern biology.”
Principal Project Personnel includes the MIS Department’s Sudha Ram (as Co Principal Investigator and Cyberinfrastructure Development, Integrated Solutions Team co-leader) and Sue Brown as Social Networking lead.
Read the press release for this announcement here. (written by iPlant media).
Read the full article announcing the award here. (written by The University Media Center).
Read the article in Eller Times here (written by Eller media).
See the television coverage here:
KUAT (PBS): http://tv.azpm.org/kuat/segments/2008/1/30/kuaz-bio5-institute/
KOLD (CBS): http://www.kold.com/Global/story.asp?S=7796573
For more in-depth information on this project, view the iPlant Collaborative website here.
For additional information, please contact us.
