The National Science Foundation awarded Iowa State a $3 million grant for graduate studies on computational molecular biology. The five-year Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training grant is a continuation of a $2.6 million grant awarded in 1999.

Daniel Voytas, professor for genetics, development and cell biology, is the leader of the faculty team that was awarded the grant in 1999. He said bioinformatics represents the changing face of biology, which gives biologists the tools to handle large data sets.

“It’s a new discipline and it really emerged from large data sets that have been accumulated recently,” Voytas said. “Biologists realized that they don’t have the tools to analyze such data sets. So they have to reach out to other disciplines to get the tools to help figure out what, for example, the genetic code means.”

Iowa State used the 1999 grant to establish an interdepartmental graduate program in bioinformatics and computational biology. It is a discipline that uses computer science and statistics to solve biological problems.

“Iowa State has been extraordinarily successful in fostering a highly collaborative research environment, as evidenced by the large number of interdisciplinary research projects in bioinformatics and computational biology,” said Robert Jernigan, director of the Laurence H. Baker Center for Bioinformatics and Biological Statistics, in a statement. “This research helps ensure that ISU plays a leading role in systems biology and post-genomic science to enhance biological and agricultural developments, leading to sustained economic growth in Iowa.”

Voytas said this program has attracted graduate students from all over the United States.

“For the first two years if you are working toward a masters degree, a lot of that training is spent learning a complimentary discipline,” Voytas said. “If you are in a Ph.D., then you are going to apply what you know about both disciplines to understand a problem.”

According to a news release, sent out Wednesday, the 1999 grant also laid the groundwork for a summer institute, attended by industrial and academic scientists, and designed to recruit graduate students. A 2001 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for a Multidisciplinary Graduate Education and Training program for $1.76 million was also a result of the 1999 grant, according to the news release.

Voytas hopes that computational biology could be used to discern clues that can figure out how certain diseases work.

The national cancer institute has a huge database of genes in particular cancer cells. Voytas said he hopes computational biology would help decipher this huge repository of data.