The Netherlands Bioinformatics Centre or NBIC is a Dutch, government-funded organization, that coordinates all academic work on bioinformatics

Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics is the application of computer science and information technology to the field of biology and medicine. Bioinformatics deals with algorithms, databases and information systems, web technologies, artificial intelligence and soft computing, information and computation theory, software...

 in the Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

. NBIC consists of programs for research (BioRange), for education (BioWise), and for support (BioAssist).

NBIC partners are all Dutch universities and university hospitals, and some commercial entities.

History

In 2003 NBIC was launched as a not-for profit organization, to strengthen and organize the bioinformatics research happening in the Netherlands.
This happened as part of a four-pillar approach to improve the genomics-based research in the Netherlands. The other three pillars are:
the Netherlands Proteomics Centre, the Netherlands Metabolomics Centre and the Netherlands Consortium for Systems Biology.

Funding

The Netherlands Bioinformatics Centre is funded by the Dutch government through the Netherlands Genomics Initiative and the BSIK (knowledge infrastructures) programme.

Support

The support department of NBIC, BioAssist, consists of task forces that bring together experts in the different fields of Bioinformatics. Together, these people identify common problems in their field that they set out to solve in a collaborative way. BioAssist also has a group, BioInformatics Research Support (BRS), that helps biological and medical professionals with short bioinformatics projects.

Education

The education part of NBIC, BioWise, organizes courses and trainings at different levels. They provide awareness training at schools, collaborate with the different bioinformatics education programs at the universities in the Netherlands, and organize trainings for PhD students. Also, subject-specific trainings and conferences are organized, either nationally or with other international partners like the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics

Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics

The Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics is an academic not-for-profit foundation which federates bioinformatics activities throughout Switzerland...

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Organising Bioinformatics research

So far, NBIC has achieved its goal of bringing together the different bioinformatics research groups in the Netherlands. It is now also partnering up with Dutch universities of Applied Sciences (UAS) in the LOBIN network. in July 2011, four UASes have joined.

Bioinformatics software

A wide variety of bioinformatics software has been created by people involved in NBIC. NBIC also hosts a service to coordinate software development (Trac server with software releases and project documentation). Many tools are also made available through NBIC's own open Galaxy

Galaxy (computational biology)

Galaxy is a scientific workflow, data integration, and data and analysis persistence and publishing platform that aims to make computational biology accessible to research scientists that do not have computer programming experience...

 server

Industrial links

First steps have been made to include commercial entities, among others via the Bioinformatics Industrial Users Platform (BIUP). The BIUP, though still in its start-up phase in mid-2011, has already attracted partners such as DSM

DSM (company)

DSM is a multinational life sciences and materials sciences-based company. DSM's global end markets include food and dietary supplements, personal care, feed, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, automotive, paints, electrical and electronics, life protection, alternative energy and bio-based materials...

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Community Building

A large part of NBIC's efforts focus on developing new or strengthening existing bio-informatics communities. For example, NBIC hosted the 2011 Galaxy

Galaxy (computational biology)

Galaxy is a scientific workflow, data integration, and data and analysis persistence and publishing platform that aims to make computational biology accessible to research scientists that do not have computer programming experience...

Community Conference