Established 2008 | Founded 2008 | |
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Director Director A/Prof Andrew Lonie Website melbournebioinformatics.org.au Affiliations University of Melbourne, RMIT University, Deakin University | ||
Melbourne Bioinformatics (Formerly the Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative, VLSCI) is a high-performance computing cluster for life sciences and bioinformatics based in Melbourne, Australia. It was funded by the Victorian Government and contributing institutions and hosted by the University of Melbourne. It operated under the name VLSCI from 2009 to 2016 before and was rebranded as Melbourne Bioinformatics in 2017.
Background
The VLSCI was part of the Victorian government's plans to support biotechnology, and was listed as a key infrastructure project in the Victorian Biotechnology Action Plan 2011. The VLSCI was established as a $100m initiative of the Victorian Government in partnership with The University of Melbourne and the IBM Life Sciences Research Collaboratory, Melbourne. Other major stakeholders included key Victorian health and medical research institutions, major universities and public research organisations.
In 2015 the VLSCI transitioned to a new governance model after receiving a further $6.65m from the Victorian State Government. The first IBM Research Collaboratory for Life Sciences was co-located at VLSCI for 5 years. Since moving to the nearby offices of IBM Research Australia, Collaboratory staff have continued to work on a range of projects as part of a broader University of Melbourne/IBM partnership.