As part of a campus-wide initiative to increase diversity, a collaboration with Fisk University was recently approved for an additional five years of continued financial support from the Office of Executive Associate Chancellor for Administration and University Relations and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research (OVCRI). Founder Professor of Physics Jun Song (ACPP) will oversee hands-on bioinformatics, data analysis, and biophysics training for under-represented minority undergraduate students from Fisk University, a minority-serving institution (MSI) in Nashville, Tennessee.

Five years ago, a team of computer scientists, biomedical researchers, and bioinformaticians set out to bring the power of collective knowledge to genomic research. Their new publication in PLOS Biology shares the culmination of that effort, an analytical platform that guides researchers through the process of interpreting complex genomic datasets.

The rise of genomics, the shift from considering genes singly to collectively, is adding a new dimension to medical care; biomedical researchers hope to use the information contained in human genomes to make better predictions about individual health, including responses to therapeutic drugs. A new computational tool developed through a collaboration between the University of Illinois and Mayo Clinic combines multiple types of genomic information to make stronger predictions about what genomic features are associated with specific drug responses.