Abstract

The VLSCI was announced in June 2008 as a major computation life sciences facility to be managed by the University of Melbourne.

The VLSCI, comprised of a planned 400 teraflop computing facility and a multidisciplinary research and development team, is intended to support and advance the computational needs of Victorian life sciences researchers, and is a key component of the recently announced State Government statement on innovation. In this talk I will outline the goals and vision for the VLSCI and sketch opportunities that the initiative creates.

About the speaker

Justin Zobel is Professor of Computational Bioinformatics at the University of Melbourne, where he is leading the Computing for Life Sciences initiative within National ICT Australia's Victorian Laboratory.

He received his PhD from the University of Melbourne and for many years was based in the School of CS&IT at RMIT University, where he led the Search Engine group. In the research community, he is best known for his role in the development of algorithms for efficient text retrieval. He is editor of several journals and author of the text "Writing for Computer Science"; his interests include search, bioinformatics, fundamental data structures, and research methods.