Dr. Eric Jakobsson, director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at NIGMS/NIH and
Chair of Biomedical Information Science and Technology Initiative Consortium at NIH

Dr. Eric Jakobsson is the director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Chair of the Biomedical Information Science and Technology Initiative Consortium at NIH.

He's involved with administering programs integrating the power of computers with the techniques of research biology to more completely explain the most intricate workings of living systems.

One aspect of this integration involves the recent establishment of a new "Center for Excellence," called the Center for Quantitative Biology at Princeton University. The press release from the Center of Excellence in Complex Biomedical Systems Research issued by NIGMS on this occasion said:

"Called the Center for Quantitative Biology, the effort will focus on three key biological questions: how body patterns are established during an organism's early development, how cells control their internal functions and communicate with each other, and how viruses interact with host cells."

Dr. Jakobsson spoke today with Etopia Media Medical News Network about the establishment of the CQB and about a number of other aspects of the continuing and accelerating merger of biological research and computing power.

You can hear what he had to say by clicking here.

For more information about research funding for the Complex Biological Systems Initiatives at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the National Institutes of Health, click here.