When life sciences become data sciences

The University of Freiburg has set up infrastructure and services to support researchers across Europe in the fields of biology, medicine, and pharmacy with the analysis of very large data sets. The team led by Rolf Backofen, Professor of Bioinformatics at the Faculty of Engineering, has been coordinating the High Performance Computing Center since 2015; the center receives sponsorship of some 5.8 million euros from the German Ministry of Education and Research and is now being expanded into a Europe-wide service. This places the group at the forefront of networks in Germany and across Europe…

At the University of Freiburg, the focus is on the Galaxy Project, which arose as part of the collaborative research center “Medical Epigenetics.” It was originally an online platform developed at Penn State University in the US, giving researchers the use of high-performance computing for their work. “The researchers upload their data and can then apply various analysis tools to it, or combine them, alter the parameters, change the data into the necessary format, and much more…

Current methods for examining cell functions, for example in genomic research, produce vast data sets. Bioinformatics provides the toolkit with which researchers can process this data. RNA bioinformatics is one imporant focus of this research in Freiburg…

Since August 2016 the German Network for Bioinformatics Infrastructure overall has become a hub for the European Network for Bioinformatics Infrastructure ELIXIR. Rolf Backofen is one of its leading coordinators. Now Freiburg researchers are able to provide their service across Europe.

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