One of the Forum’s founding sponsors, the Victoria Research Laboratory of NICTA, travelled to Washington D.C. in June to showcase its health research at the Bio2011 Exhibition and Conference, the world’s largest gathering of the biotech industry.
In 2006, the Lab took a strategic decision to apply its leading engineering and computing research capabilities to tackle major issues affecting community health. Today, around 100 Lab researchers and PhD students are collaborating with biologists and medical researchers in Melbourne on a range of projects, all of which are important examples of the growing local activity in the ‘new biology’, the convergence of biology with computing and engineering.
At Bio 2011, NICTA announced progress on three exciting projects.
• As a member of the Bionic Vision Australia consortium, NICTA is playing the leading role of designing the high-acuity retinal implant device that is aimed at restoring vision for sufferers from age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. It announced that it has successfully probe-tested the first high-acuity microchip. The researchers have now begun working on a design for the microchip with 1000 electrodes. IBM fabricated the first high-acuity device in the United States.
• In collaboration with Melbourne’s Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI), NICTA has developed a software tool that automates the analysis of cell behaviour using microscopic cell images from months to days. Current techniques involve undertaking a number of experiments in which several thousand microscopic video images are collected over a period of days, which are then manually analyzed over a period of months. NICTA’s TrackAssist tool not only reduces the time it takes researchers to analyze microscopic videos, it also provides insight into the workings of cells, enabling new types of experiments to be conducted quickly. TrackAssist is expected to become an important tool used in the development of new vaccines and drugs.
• Computer processing has played an important role in DNA research and in the process changed the way we understand the genome of humans and other species. DNA sequencing reads billions of short fragments of DNA and genome assembly reconstructs DNA sequences from sample fragments to help answer important biological questions. Until now, performing such assembly tasks required large amounts of computer memory and expensive computer infrastructure. NICTA has developed Gossamer, a tool that allows researchers to assemble DNA fragments using cheap commodity computers rather than supercomputers. A prototype version of the tool is available to the research community be trialled for non-commercial use. The tool can be downloaded from the NICTA website - http://www.nicta.com.au/business/health/projects/bioinformatics
You can view the release for each of these announcements made on 28 June 2011 by visiting the NICTA website here - http://www.nicta.com.au/media
Click to view a video describing the health research being undertaken at NICTA’s Victoria Research Laboratory.
Images taken on the NICTA booth at Bio 2011 in Washington D.C.
Professor Skafidas (centre) describing some of the electronics behind the Bionic eye to Senator Kim Carr (right)
Professor Skafidas (left) discussing NICTA’s Bionic eye research with Senator Kim Carr.
