As the need for large scale data analysis and computational approaches to advance medical research grows, MRC is announcing an investment of £50m to support medical bioinformatics.

Key areas for funding will include:

• Improving informatics and computational approaches to understanding mechanisms of human disease – from the cellular level through to the whole disease phenotype
• Research linkage between basic genomic information, complex phenotypes, and clinical data sets
• Analytical capabilities tailored to medical research and in particular the challenge of integration across differing degrees of resolution, dynamic scales and heterogeneity of data, and interpretation of very large and rich data sets including genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, imaging, population health sciences etc.

Up to £35m capital (for spend in 2014/15) and £15m resource will be available. They expect to provide funding for staff, projects and capability development for up to six, five-year strategic awards. Fellowship funding is also available for recruitment of research leaders of the future in bioinformatics and computational biology.

This has a two stage application process, and all prospective applicants must submit an Expression of Interest. Deadlines and time-frames are as follows:

For more information and full details on how to apply visit http://www.mrc.ac.uk/Newspublications/News/MRC009048