Scientific teams at Stanford and in Pittsburgh have recently received funding of over USD 20 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), for the research & development of a “global atlas of the human body”.

These teams comprise two out of the six HIVE (HuBMAP Integration, Visualization & Engagement) Collaboratory components; the HIVE Infrastructure and Engagement Component co-led by Jonathan Silverstein and Phil Blood from PSC (Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center), itself a joint venture between the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, and the CMU Tools Component of the HIVE, led by Matt Ruffalo.

These components will receive USD 16 million and USD 4 million respectively, over the next 4 years, for the development of transdisciplinary collaboration, hybrid cloud infrastructure, software tools, and data integration for HuBMAP (Human BioMolecular Atlas Program).

According to Phil Blood, lead PI (principal investigator) of the HIVE IEC and PSC Scientific Director, the success of HuBMAP’s first phase was hinged on social and technological flexibility in the project, as well as strong multi-institutional partnerships. The successful HuBMAP approach has also been used in other data projects of the NIH, including the Common Fund Data Ecosystem and the Cellular Senescence Network, added Blood.

HIVE IEC’s PI, professor at the Pitt School of Medicine’s Department of Biomedical Informatics, and Pitt Health Sciences and the Institute for Precision Medicine’s Chief Research Informatics Officer, Jonathan Silverstein also expressed excitement about bringing this alliance among PSC, CMU, Pitt, and Stanford into the production phase.

The funding is part of the total grant of USD 98 million earmarked for the next four years of the HuBMAP Consortium, which includes various research teams funded by the NIH’s Common Fund. The Consortium is working on developing the tools required for a global atlas of the human body at a cellular level, which will be easily accessible, in order to facilitate a better understanding of the relationship between human health and the organization and function of tissue and cells.

Source Credit: https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/nih-awards-20m-for-international-collaboration-to-map-human-body/