Data project awarded �10m funding

The data will be stored in massive computers at Hinxton, near Cambridge

A Cambridge research centre has been awarded £10m of government funds to develop science data retrieval systems.

The European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) at Hinxton will use the money to construct storage for the huge amounts of data produced by scientists.

Funding has come from the the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

The institute hopes the systems will help speed up research into new drugs, therapies and higher-yielding crops.

The institute explained that scientists need easy access to data to enable them to construct computer models for testing before projects go live.

An institute spokeswoman said one example of how the storage systems could help biologists was to provide data for a project building a virtual computer heart.

The hope is that new drug treatments will be tested on it before carrying out trials on animals and humans.

BBSRC chief executive, Professor Doug Kell, likened the increasing use of computer modelling to engineering.

He said: "You wouldn't trust an engineer to build a bridge without building a model first."

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