Ohio State University Medical Center biomedical informatics researcher is tapping the power of the Ohio Supercomputer Center to monitor the spread of the H1N1 influenza virus.
Associate professor Daniel Janies, an expert in computational genomics, synthesizes large, diverse datasets to understand the spread of infectious diseases over hosts and geography. The resulting maps can be viewed with Google Earth.
With his findings, Janies will project the evolutionary tree of the virus’ mutations and host shifts onto the globe using Supramap, an easy-to-use, web application. He and his colleagues created Supramap in 2007 to track avian influenza. However the underlying technology is applicable to any infectious disease.
OSC recently addressed the growing needs of Ohio’s bioscience and research efforts with a $4 million expansion of its flagship supercomputing system. When the upgrade to the IBM Cluster 1350 is completed this summer, Ohio researchers such as Janies will have access to more than twice the system’s current computing power and memory.
For more information please visit www.osc.edu.
