History
The $100 million Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative, including $50 million in State funding for peak computing infrastructure, was announced by Victorian Premier John Brumby at the BIO2008 conference in California on 17 June 2008. There was a subsequent announcement and media conference at the University of Melbourne the following morning.
On 11 September 2008 there was a briefing at the University to the research community including institutions within the Parkville life science precinct, Monash University, Swinburne University, La Trobe University, St Vincent's Institute, and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. The presentation can be found on the publications page.
A Request For Proposal (RFP) was issued for a Key Partner to help deliver the Life Sciences Computation Centre and Peak Computing Facility in November last year. Responses to the tender were due in February.
In December 2008 we collected responses to our request to Victorian researchers for outlines of projects relating to the life sciences that could benefit from advanced computational resources. The list is up on the website at the Potential Projects page.
Discussions occurred in January/February with the following organisations in relation to business plan development and requesting proposals from potential partners: Monash University, La Trobe University, the Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing, the Victorian eResearch Strategic Initiative, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Howard Florey Institute, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, and St Vincent's Institute.