Innovation Anthology #184:
The new iCORE Chair in Biosystems Informatics at the University of Alberta is Dr. Gane Wong.
What he does is process biological information. With the explosion in DNA analysis since the human genome project, biologists are among the biggest users of computational power.
That’s why computer scientists, mathematicians, and even physicists like Dr. Wong are finding their way into biology labs.
Dr. Wong’s research is focused on making the technology to gather biological data work faster and cost less.
And he says a recent change in technology has taken that improvement from a factor of two per year to a factor of 100.
DR. GANE WONG: And The technical change is called massive parallelism where they basically instead of doing individual experiments, they capture single DNA molecules on a cover slide and then do millions of experiments. So each molecule becomes a separate experiment on the cover slide. So there was a big factor of 100 improvement in about year.
Dr. Gane Wong predicts within ten years, the cost of sequencing a human genome will drop from half a million dollars to a mere one thousand.
Thanks today to iCORE, the Informatics Circle of Research Excellence.
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY,
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
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Sponsor
iCORE, Informatics Circle of Research Excellence
iCORE was established in October 1999 by the Government of Alberta to foster an expanding community of exceptional researchers in the field of informatics, that is, areas of computer science, electrical and computer engineering, physics, mathematics and other disciplines related to information and communications technology (ICT).
As part of the Government of Alberta’s strategy to create a globally competitive knowledge-based economic sector, iCORE is directing its support to areas in which Alberta has a chance to develop internationally recognized research teams. It is also focusing on areas in which Alberta companies are active, so that intellectual property and valuable knowledge workers resulting from iCORE’s investment will have compelling reasons to stay in Alberta.
iCORE invests in people of the highest calibre, research scientists who work on fundamental and applied problems in informatics. It operates several grant programs to develop iCORE Chairs at Alberta universities, around which world-class research teams are developed. Since its inception, more than 24 research chairs have been established to focus on emerging areas such as wireless communications, artificial intelligence, and quantum and nanocomputing.
The iCORE principle is simple: exceptional people produce exceptional results.
In January 2010, under the new Alberta Innovation Framework, iCORE was restructured and incorporated into the new provincial agency Alberta Innovates Technology Futures.
Program Date: 2008-11-13