Research Group Overview

Cyberinfrastructure group overview

The approach used for research in the Cyberinfrastructure (CI) Division is transdisciplinary, uniting diverse initiatives to address some of key challenges in the biomedical, environmental and agricultural sciences. Cyberinfrastructure, which underpins infectious disease research in Dr. Sobral¿s group, refers to new research environments that support advanced data acquisition, storage, management, integration, mining, visualization and other computing and information processing services via computing infrastructure. As such, cyberinfrastructure is a technological solution to the problem of efficiently connecting data, computers, and people with the goal of generating new scientific theories and knowledge.

The bioinformatics resources developed by the CI Group include tools for the curation of the genomes and pathogen systems of a wide range of infectious organisms, database systems for acquiring, storing, and disseminating high-throughput data generated from the study of pathosystems biology, and software systems for analysis and visualization of the data.  Integrated into this effort are education and outreach activities that include the training of current and future generations of scientists as well as collaborative research activities.

Some of the projects of the CI Group include:

• PATRIC (patricbrc.org)
• Pathogen Portal (pathogenportal.org)
• Mid-Atlantic Regional Center of Excellence in Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Disease (marce.vbi.vt.edu)

Some of the resources offered by the CI Division include:

• Comprehensive Genome Curation and Annotation Infrastructure and Analysis Servers
• Document information systems that integrate and disseminate published information on pathogens in a machine-readable format
• Database systems, web visualization and bioinformatic tools for microarray and proteomic applications
• Text mining focused on deep semantic parsing
• Portals leveraging distributed resources through programmatic access
• Usability Engineering of Interfaces
• A Molecular Genetics Laboratory geared toward validation of informatics-based predictions
• The Nutritional Immunology Group led by Dr. Bassaganya-Riera

Leader: Bruno Sobral