C-DAC: Press Kit - Press Releases - C-DAC to Inaugurate Bioinformatics Resources & Applications Facility (BRAF)

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) will launch the 'Bioinformatics Applications and Resources Facility (BRAF)' at C-DAC's Terascale Supercomputing Facility (CTSF), Knowledge Park, Bangalore on June 14, 2004. Shri. K. K. Jaswal, Secretary, Department of Information Technology (DIT), Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India will inaugurate the BRAF in the presence of senior officials from the Department of Information Technology (DIT), Govt. of India. A Bioinformatics Discussion Meet will follow the inaugural session. Eminent scientists in the Bioinformatics arena from academic institutions like IIT-Bombay (Mumbai), CDFD (Hyderabad), NCCS (Pune), NCL (Pune), JNU (Delhi), and NCBS (Bangalore) and organizations like Jubilant Biosys (Bangalore) and SysArris Software Pvt. (Bangalore) will be participating in the Discussion Meet to deliver scientific/technical presentations in the high end computing areas of Bioinformatics. This will be followed by demonstrations of the available Bioinformatics software that have been ported on the PARAM Padma, the one teraflop supercomputer, developed indigenously by C-DAC.

The BRAF provides a high-end supercomputing facility to the Bioinformatics research community with remote access to the existing Bioinformatics software available on the PARAM Padma, with a peak speed of one teraflop. The facility would be a unique platform to biologists, biotechnologists, chemists and other academic and industry people, to accelerate their research in the areas of Bioinformatics like molecular modeling, sequence analysis, comparative genomics, systems biology and microarray data analysis and so on.

Speaking to the media, Dr. S. C. Purohit, Director, C-DAC said that the BRAF would "effectively serve scientists engaged in Bioinformatics research to seek the answers to the problems that could usher in a revolution for the Bioinformatics industry. It will establish the foremost link between the scientists and C-DAC's High Performance Computing technology for mutual benefit".

The event expects to attract researchers, policy and decision makers in Research Institutes, Universities, Bioinformatics Industries and the Government. The event is targeted especially to benefit those who have felt the need of high performance computing systems and grid computing to accelerate the process of research and derive solutions for the various biological problems that continue to baffle researchers today.

Established in March 1988, as a Scientific Society of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (formerly the Department of Electronics), Government of India, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), is primarily an R&D institution involved in the Design, Development and Deployment of Electronics and Advanced Information Technology (IT) products and solutions.

In a decade and a half since its inception, C-DAC has established its brand image as a premier R & D institution of national and international repute working in advanced areas of electronics and information technology and developing and deploying IT products and solutions for diverse sectors of economy. C-DAC's foray in the area of Supercomputing based Bioinformatics has a manifesto to develop, port and optimize codes on the PARAM series of Supercomputers, in the various areas of Bioinformatics like molecular modeling, sequence analysis, comparative genomics and microarray data analysis, and to carry out research in the related areas.