344 CATALYZING INQUIRY
instances, awardees had backgrounds from more traditional biological orientations without the compu-
tational dimension. Of particular interest to the Sloan-DOE program are important problems in struc-
tural biology and genome analysis, including analysis of protein and nucleic acid sequence, protein and
nucleic acid structure, genome structure and maps, cross-species genome analysis, multigenic traits,
and structure-function relationships where the structures are from genomes, genes, or gene products.
The Sloan-DOE postdoctoral award supports up to 2 years of research in an appropriate molecular
biology department or laboratory in the United States or Canada selected by the awardee. In magni-
tude, the award provides for a total budget of $120,000 (including indirect and overhead costs), spread
over a grant period of 2 years.
10.2.2.5.2 The Burroughs-Wellcome Career Awards at the Scientific Interface^10 The Burroughs-
Wellcome Career Awards at the Scientific Interface are intended to foster the early career development
of researchers with backgrounds in the physical and computational sciences whose work addresses
biological questions and who are dedicated to pursuing a career in academic research.^11 Prospective
awardees are expected to have Ph.D.-level training in a scientific field other than biology and are
encouraged to describe potential collaborations with well-established investigators working on inter-
face problems of interest.
The program provides $500,000 over 5 years to support up to 2 years of advanced postdoctoral
training and the first 3 years of a faculty appointment. In general, an awardee is expected to accept a
faculty position at an institution other than the one supporting the postdoc, a requirement that is likely
to spread the philosophy of interface research embodied in the program more effectively than the
publishing of papers or program descriptions.
In addition, the Burroughs-Welcome Fund (BWF) requires the faculty-hiring institution to make a
significant commitment to the award recipient’s career development, where “significant commitment”
is demonstrated by the financial and professional situation offered. Tenure-track faculty appointments
are strongly preferred, accompanied by salary support and/or support for starting up a laboratory.
Awardees are required to devote at least 80 percent of their time to research-related activities. Further-
more, the faculty-hiring institution must offer the awardee to take an adjunct appointment in a second
department and name at least one tenured faculty member in a discipline complementary to the
awardee’s primary discipline who is willing to serve as an active collaborator.
10.2.2.5.3 Keck Center for Computational and Structural Biology: The Research Training Program The
W.M. Keck Center for Computational and Structural Biology is an interdisciplinary and interinstitu-
tional organization, including Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Houston, Rice University,
University of Texas Health Science Center, the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, and University of Texas
Medical Branch at Galveston. Subareas of focus include computational methods and tools, biomolecular
structure and function, imaging and dynamics, mathematical modeling of biosystems, and medical and
genomic informatics. The faculty include some 130 members, drawn from member institutions, and a
(^10) See http://www.bwfund.org/programs/interfaces/career_awards_background.html.
(^11) A previous Burroughs-Wellcome Fund (BWF) program, known as Institutional Awards at the Scientific Interface, has been
discontinued. (Together with the Career Awards program, it constituted the BWF Interfaces in Science effort.) The purpose of the
Institutional Awards program was to support U.S. and Canadian academic institutions in developing interdisciplinary graduate
and postdoctoral training programs for individuals with backgrounds in the physical, computational, or mathematical sciences
to pursue biological questions. For example, pre- and postdoctoral fellows at the La Jolla Consortium and the University of
Chicago’s Institute for Biophysical Dynamics had to propose research projects that required the participation of two mentors—
one from the quantitative sciences and one from the biological sciences—before being awarded financial support. For more on
the Institutional Awards program, see N.S. Sung, J.I. Gordon, G.D. Rose, E.D. Getzoff, S.J. Kron, D. Mumford, J.N. Onuchic, et al.,
“Science Education: Educating Future Scientists,” Science 301(5639):1485, 2003, available at http://www.bwfund.org/programs/
interfaces/institutional_main.html.