Biomedical Informatics, Data Science Program Wins $4M NIH Grant

Rice University’s National Library of Medicine Training Program (NLMTP) in Biomedical Informatics and Data Science has been awarded a $4.16 million grant to extend its program, which focuses on multidisciplinary training among researchers in biological and computational sciences, until 2027.

The National Library of Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), awarded the funding. Rice’s award will support eight PhD students and five postdoctoral fellows each year, who will be co-mentored by two faculty members with complementary expertise.

“We aspire to train a generation of scientists who are comfortable crossing traditional boundaries and who can find bold solutions to biomedical problems,” said Lydia Kavraki, PhD, principal investigator and program director of the NLMTP, in a press release.

Rice’s NLMTP builds on a program created over 30 years ago to train computational biologists. This is the seventh grant renewal the program has received to date. This most recent grant is focused on biomedical informatics and data science, with particular emphasis on applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in biomedicine, health, and disease.

Participants in the program will engage in research related to healthcare and clinical informatics, translational bioinformatics, and clinical research informatics, which have the potential to advance areas like personalized and precision medicine, the press release states.

“Biomedical informatics broadly encompasses the design and implementation of novel methodologies and technologies to solve challenging problems across the entire spectrum of biology and medicine,” Kavraki said. “Our training program puts emphasis on quantitative methods and data science. I cannot imagine dealing with biomedical problems in the future without strong foundations in computer science, statistics and data science.”

The program brings together trainees and faculty from Rice, Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Houston, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB), according to the press release.

Rice’s NLMTP is one of 18 nationwide. Additional programs are hosted at Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and other universities.

The grant renewal highlights the growing interest in how biomedical informatics and data science can address various healthcare challenges and train the next generation of clinicians and researchers.

Last year, Yale University and Boehringer Ingelheim partnered to launch a fellowship program that would support biomedical data science efforts to advance drug discovery and development.

The NLM has also recently awarded funding to multiple programs.

In May, the Medical University of South Carolina and Clemson University were awarded $1.2 million to establish a new training program focusing on harnessing big data to address health inequities.

Last month, the Indiana Training Program in Public and Population Health Informatics, a collaboration between Indiana University and the Regenstrief Institute, received a five-year continuation of funding totaling $2.5 million.