AUSTRALIA: A$100 million supercomputing facility

The University of Melbourne is to host a A$100 million (US$94 million) supercomputing facility under a new state government life sciences computation initiative. The project aims to develop the world's most powerful supercomputer and leading computational biology facility dedicated to life sciences research.

The government has committed $50 million to the venture and Melbourne will raise $50 million. University vice-chancellor Professor Glyn Davis said the computation centre would undertake the peak computing operations and provide computational biology expertise to other institutions, thereby encouraging a collaborative approach to medical research.

"We are tremendously excited about the potential for this initiative to expand dramatically the state's and the university's capacity in bioinformatics, computational biology and advanced biomedical image analysis," Davis said.

"The far reaching vision and scale of this initiative will combine Victoria's already globally competitive biomedical research capability with computational infrastructure specially designed for the life sciences, equal to the best in the world."

Dean of medicine Professor James Angus said life sciences research was being transformed by the application of rapid advances in computational biology, powered by innovations in very high performance computers and data management.

"This will lead to major improvements in public health outcomes - particularly in the areas of cancer, cardiovascular and neurological disease, chronic inflammatory diseases, bone diseases and diabetes," Angus said.