Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to Expand Quantitative Biology

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL; Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) announced a $50 million gift to establish a center for quantitative biology. The Center’s establishment is part of a trend in which both research and clinical laboratories are investing heavily in bioinformatic analysis capabilities. The Simons Center for Quantitative Biology, established with a $50 million gift from Jim Simons’ foundation (he applied mathematical expertise to financial markets), will bring together experts in applied mathematics, computer science, theoretical physics, and engineering to further basic research and investigation into illnesses including cancer, autism, bipolar disorder and depression. “The pace of modern science and the vast amount of data being generated, both in genomics and imaging, has necessitated an expansion of our research to include scientists with expertise in quantitative analysis” said Bruce Stillman, CEO of CSHL, in a statement. For more information on trends in interpretation of next-generation sequencing results, please see Inside the Diagnostics Industry on page 5.