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About BMI
Background
BMI was created in 2001. Over the past seven years, BMI has grown to sixteen faculty and over thirty students and staff. Since its inception, BMI has exceeded traditional expectations in the OSU College of Medicine and significantly increased its productivity in terms of extramural funding and publications each year. Much of this success has been built on research begun in the early 1990s by Dr. Joel Saltz, who has served as the first chair of the Department since its creation in 2001. Dr. Saltz's research has brought international recognition to the University in biomedical informatics.
BMI applies distributed and parallel computing techniques to data retrieval and integration, imaging, simulation, medical informatics, computational biology, and comparative genomics. The Department's Multiscale Computing Lab specializes in applying advanced computer science methodology to biomedical software development. BMI develops middleware, such as caGrid and CVRG, to enable Grid computing in the biological, medical, and physical sciences. These research efforts have resulted in innovations in the areas of
- runtime support for distributed data processing and management,
- optimized data distribution and indexing techniques,
- strategies for efficient querying and processing of data in distributed environments,
- grid based security frameworks and
- tools to hide the complexity associated with developing grid applications.
Much of BMIs research has been supported by the National Science Foundation , the Ohio Board of Regents, the National Institutes of Health , the National Cancer Institute, the American Museum of Natural History, the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and the Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, as well as several industry partners. BMIs research has been used to develop the caGrid and BIRN middleware frameworks. BMI is the lead site for the National Cancer Institutes caGrid project. In 2006, BMI also began providing consulting services through Department personnel.