The recently-announced partnership between the @UofR and IBM is starting to bear fruit already. The National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases (NIAID), which is part of the National Institutes of Health have awarded the school $4.7 million in funding – extensible for up to 7 years and as much as $50m – for continued research into the germs which cause various lung diseases.
The University press release cites the Health Sciences Center for Computational Innovation (basically, a shit-ton of expensive computing power, aimed at crunching medical research numbers) that is the partnership between IBM and the University as the key factor in winning the grant. The State of New York has also awarded the U of R $5m in grant money for this project. The University expects to create as many as 250 jobs in Rochester for research assistants, nurses, info analysts and other support personnel.
Aims of the research include investigating the relationship and interaction between the beneficial germs that are native to our bodies and the harmful germs that cause the flu, research into better vaccinations for elderly patients against pneumonia and clinical trials of drugs and vaccines.
For more information on the research initiative and the federal grant money, see the below-linked press release: