NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) — The European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) announced today that it has been awarded £45 million ($59.7 million) from the UK government to expand its computing infrastructure.
The EMBL-EBI develops freely available databases, tools, and software to enable the alignment, verification, and visualization of data produced in publicly funded research. It has been a contributor to the Human Cell Atlas and the UK Biobank, among other initiatives.
Cambridgeshire, England-based EMBL-EBI said it will use the funding — which is being made available through UK Research and Innovation's (UKRI) Strategic Priorities Fund — to increase its computing, storage, and building capacity.
"Our ability to process, access, and interrogate large volumes of data is absolutely crucial to scientific discovery in the 21st century, none more so than in health and life sciences where the fields of genomics and molecular biology are fuelling major advances," UKRI Chief Executive Mark Walport said in a statement. "This funding enables EMBL-EBI to continue to grow its global leadership in large biological datasets and bioinformatics, which are used by researchers all over the world, every day of the week."