The U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded a four-year, $1.6 million training grant to Iowa State for use in its growing computational biology program.

The grant will support graduate students in the Multi-Disciplinary Graduate Education Training program, which combines mathematics, computation and biology to analyze data in animal agriculture.

“Iowa State has made a commitment to bioinformatics and computational biology, and the training grant builds on ISU’s efforts in these areas,” said Susan Carpenter, professor of veterinary microbiology and preventive medicine. “The training grant will enhance our ability to attract and train high-caliber students.”

Computation biology combines computation and math with traditional methods of animal breeding to help analyze genetic information, said Chris Tuggle, professor of animal science.

Students analyze biological data from three areas of animal agriculture: animal and microbial genetics, infectious disease, and growth and development of healthy animals, he said.

“The idea is that once we have the genetic information, we can predict biological results,” Tuggle said. “It is a huge amount of information, but it takes computers, math and statistics to decide what is important in the data.”

The grant proposal, co-directed by Carpenter and Tuggle, was approved and put into effect Oct. 1. The majority of the grant money will be used to support graduate students in the Multi-disciplinary Graduate Education Training program, Carpenter said.

“Funds will be used for recruiting and supporting graduate students in computational biology for animal agriculture,” she said.

Iowa State’s strong graduate-level animal breeding and bioinformatics and computational biology programs were instrumental in receiving the grant, Tuggle said.

The training program is inter-disciplinary, drawing graduate students from majors such as animal science, statistics and computer science, he said.

Students study with faculty from computer science, mathematics, statistics, animal genetics and biotechnology, cell and developmental biology and infectious disease.

“This inter-disciplinary program is an interface between two areas – one computational and one biological,” Carpenter said. “It brings together faculty from various disciplines and helps to support students in this new, emerging area.”

Students with skills in computational biology are highly sought after by biotechnological, genetic and pharmaceutical companies, Tuggle said.

“It’s a wide-open field,” he said, “and people are very interested.”