354 CATALYZING INQUIRY
tains the Division of Computational Bioscience, which includes activities in high-performance comput-
ing and molecular modeling; it is staffed mostly by computer scientists rather than biologists and
appears to focus on the computer science aspects of problems.
In addition, the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) is a center within NIH whose
mission is to create new research technologies and provide researchers access to resources such as high-
end instrumentation, animal models, and cell line repositories. In FY 2004, it had a budget of slightly
over a billion dollars, in large part dedicated to funding research centers, as well as individual
predoctoral, postdoctoral, and career awards. NCRR’s 2004-2008 strategic plan includes a number of
computational biology activities within its funding programs. This includes support for software and
algorithm development, mathematical modeling, and simulation. NCRR, through its Research Infra-
structure Division, also supports the creation of networks to promote cross-institutional collaboration,
including virtual laboratories and shared databases for a variety of specific clinical research programs.
This includes the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN), an Internet2 project first funded in
2002 and slated to expand in 2004. NCRR also supports cross-discipline training at all levels of a
researcher’s career—for example, supporting the entry into biology of individuals with backgrounds in
technical fields such as computer science, and retraining established researchers in appropriate fields.
The National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) is the newest institute at
NIH, and is unusual for its mission of assessing and developing technological capabilities for health and
medical research. Its research goals and portfolio include support for a number of activities at the
BioComp interface, including bioinformatics, simulation and computational modeling, image process-
ing, brain-computer interfaces, and telemedicine. More broadly, its support for interdisciplinary train-
ing and research that draw on engineering, as well as physical and life sciences, mark it as another
instrument for encouraging the development of researchers and scientists having experience with and
exposure to computational science.
In addition to these institutional entities, NIH has created a set of programmatic initiatives to promote
quantitative, interdisciplinary approaches to biomedical problems that involve the complex, interactive
behavior of many components.^38 One initiative consists of a variety of programs to develop human
capital, including those for predoctoral training for life scientists in bioinformatics and computational
biology,^39 support for short courses on mathematical and statistical tools for the study of complex pheno-
types and complex systems,^40 postdoctoral fellowships in quantitative biology,^41 and support for a period
of supervised study and research for professionals with quantitative scientific and engineering back-
grounds outside of biology or medicine who have the potential to integrate their expertise with biomedi-
cine and develop into productive investigators.^42 The National Library of Medicine supported awards for
predoctoral and postdoctoral training programs in informatics research oriented toward the life sciences
(originally medical informatics but moving toward biomedical informatics in its later years).^43
A second group of programs is targeted toward specific problems involving complex biomedical
systems. This group includes an R01 program focused on genetic architecture, biological variation, and
complex phenotypes (including human diseases);^44 another on quantitative approaches to the analysis
of complex biological systems, with a special focus on research areas in which systems approaches are
likely to result in the determination of the system-organizing principles and/or the system dynamics;^45
and still another on evolutionary mechanisms in infectious diseases.^46
(^38) See http://www.nigms.nih.gov/funding/complex_systems.html.
(^39) See http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-99-146.html.
(^40) See http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-98-083.html.
(^41) See http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-98-082.html.
(^42) See http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-02-127.html.
(^43) See http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-LM-01-001.html.
(^44) See http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-02-110.html.
(^45) See http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-98-077.html. This program includes P01 program project awards as well.
(^46) See http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-02-113.html. This program includes P01 program project awards as well.