Overview
The Doherty Institute is renowned for cutting-edge studies in infection and immunity, spanning Discovery Research, Clinical and Health Services, and Public Health. In recent years, the generation of immense data sets at the Doherty Institute has unveiled a need for sophisticated computational methods and expertise to maximise discoveries from these unique data sets. This led to the inception of a new Computational Sciences Initiative (CSI) in late 2021, funded by a generous donation from the J & M Wright Foundation.
The CSI will build multidisciplinary teams of computational scientists with infection and immunity specialists to drive the analysis of the complex data sets to maximise discoveries. This aims to transform our understanding of infection and immunity, and ability to diagnose, treat and prevent infectious diseases, leading to better health outcomes.
Strategic Plan
Structure
The CSI will build expertise and a community of practice in computational sciences, focused on infection and immunity. The CSI has three overlapping areas: Discovery Research (Bioinformatics), Clinical and Health Systems, and Public Health, which focus largely on laboratory, clinical and population data sets respectively. Both within and across these three areas, multidisciplinary teams of computational scientists and infection and immunity specialists, will collaborate to achieve this vision.
Governance
The CSI is governed by a CSI Executive Committee, together with Steering Committees for the three main areas: Discovery Research, Clinical and Health Systems, and Public Health.
- Dr Jenny Anderson, CSI Project Manager
- Dr Jan Schroeder, Wright Fellow Lead Bioinformatician, Lead of CSI computational analyses in the Discovery Research area.
The CSI also works closely with the leaders of the Doherty Cross-Cutting Discipline: Computational Sciences and Genomics.
Key activities
The CSI invites collaborations with infection and immunity specialists to assist with project design, grant applications, data management and storage, data analyses, interpretation and presentation.
The CSI is also establishing a community of practice in computational sciences focused on infection and immunity.
The CSI will run computational seminar series, informal drop-in sessions for assistance with data queries, workshops on methods and new technologies, and symposiums highlighting computational studies with infection and immunity data sets.