The Sun Center of Excellence for Visual Genomics (COE), Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary, is an innovative, non-profit organization that contributes toward numerous cutting edge initiatives that develop advanced technology in computational biology. These initiatives are revolutionizing the field of bioinformatics and include: 

Dr. Christoph Sensen in the CAVE

2D Bioinformatics - The COE is funded by Genome Alberta to enhance MAGPIE and further develop Bluejay - two genome annotation systems that are used worldwide to automatically annotate a large number of completed and partial genomes.

 3D and 4D Bioinformatics - Our latest research direction is to elucidate the causes of genetic disease using visual data exploration. We have expanded our 3D work to 4D, meaning four dimensional - with the fourth dimension being time. This is enabling us to analyse spatio-temporal patterns in genomic data and model this data (as well as the effects of change in data) in a virtual reality atlas of the human body or virtual reality atlases of other organisms. This exciting initiative uses the world's first Java 3DTM-enabled CAVE® (CAVE Automated Virtual Environment - developed at the COE) as a visualization tool for Bioinformatics research and development. 

 High Performance Computing (HPC) Resources - Dedicated computing resources such as a TimeLogic DeCypher that significantly accelerates computationally intensive bioinformatics algorithms.

CAVE at the COE

The CAVE

A pivotal feature of the COE is a fully immersive (walk in) CAVE Automated Virtual Environment consisting of four projection walls. This Java 3D technology-enabled CAVE® – a first in the world – immerses scientists in three-dimensional models of biological systems, including cells, tissues and entire organisms.

Background

Sun Microsystems Inc. awarded the bioinformatics facility "Sun Center of Excellence" status on November 29, 2001. On February 28, 2002, the COE was officially opened. We are located within the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary.

Applied Computational Genomics Course

The Applied Computational Genomics Course (ACGC) features state-of-the-art instruction on bioinformatics from well-known instructors in bioinformatics across Canada: Dr. Christoph W. Sensen, Dr. Brian Fristensky, Dr. David Wishart, and Dr. Mark Wilkinson.  The course aims at creating power users of bioinformatic packages, which include BIRCH, BioMOBY, The Bluejay genome browser, MAGPIE, PERL SCRIPT, and the Genome Canada Bioinformatics Help Desk. Offering gene annotation, gene expression profiling, visualization of large genomic data sets, and plenty more, the ACGC refines the skillsets of the novice to the advanced bioinformatician.  

 In 2009, the week-long intensive Applied Computational Genomics course was held in two locations: sunny Calgary, Alberta in the month of July and beautiful Montreal, Quebec during the month of August. 

 In order to access the web information on the upcoming ACGC's, please click here.