Goals

  1. Provide analytical support for research using high-throughput biological data (see Services). The BAC's primary goal is to implement solutions to aid UM system researchers in managing, visualizing, analyzing and interpreting biological data at scale. This includes projects ranging from genomics to machine learning. We will establish best practices compliant production environments for commonly needed analyses and develop custom solutions to assist research with data analysis and biological interpretation. BAC will serve as a central point of contact and venue for collaboration for researchers with bioinformatics and computational biology interests across the UM system.

  2. Develop a unified research information systems infrastructure at Mizzou. To be successful in modern translational bioinformatics research, MU must establish an integrated research information management infrastructure that spans bioinformatics, clinical research, information storage and retrieval; research administration/management systems; and high-performance-computing. As an integrated and interdisciplinary service unit, the BAC is uniquely positioned to help develop these partnerships across the UM system and has the cross-discipline knowledge to facilitate necessary communications with a variety of researchers and administrators to help achieve this goal.

  3. Provide outreach and bioinformatics training to the MU community (see Training). It is important that a rapport and dialogue is established between researchers and the bioinformaticians and computational biologists with whom they collaborate. The BAC will advertise services as they become available and work with investigators to establish new data analysis pipelines as requested. It also will give informational seminars as requested on supported modern analyses, and will host training series and workshops on commonly used bioinformatics tools, resources and databases.

Funding models

We are a professional service core and in order to continue providing services, our team has to generate enough revenue to stay operational. To accomplish this we use three different funding models. 

Model 1: Fee-For-Service We offer by-project and hourly fee-for-service for all bioinformatics analysis services. Downstream analysis, custom solution development and extraction of biological meaning from experimental results where it is often difficult for both investigators and bioinformaticians to place a fixed time/cost on certain open-ended questions (e.g., “Which results are statistically significant?”, “What statistical tests should I be using?").

Model 2: Departmental “Retainer” Model.

  • An MU entity (department, division or center) purchases a certain number of core hours.

  • The BAC faculty/staff member establishes ongoing relationships with faculty in that entity, providing consulting and analytical support services as needed, up to the number of hours that the entity is funding the core.

  • FTE is limited and is allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.

Model 3: Lab Retainer Model. Our preferred way to collaborate is through securing core staff effort. This method offers the most flexibility. For example, if a project has changed and a new type or series of analyses is needed, then under the fee-for-service model that would incur a new duplicated charge. Under the lab-retainer-model the BAC staff member will have a dedicated amount of their FTE assigned to you project, so they can revisit the analyses if the agreement is in effect. As with the departmental-retainer-model, FTE is limited and is allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.

Team

Lyndon Coghill, Ph.D.

Director
Website

Murugesan Raju, Ph.D.

Computational Biologist
Website

Hongyu Liu, Ph.D.

Computational Biologist
Website

Skyler Kramer

Data Science Intern & Shiny App Developer
Website