The Center for Applied Plant Sciences (CAPS) Computational Biology Laboratory (CCBL), located in Rightmire Hall, is up and running hard—aspiring to be a full-service biological data analytics environment.

“This kind of facility is critical right now,” CAPS director Erich Grotewold said. “The CCBL can be a robust model for the way to do big data analytics in the biological sciences and is the core of what data analytics means.

“We started the lab with BIG ideas. Our mission was to create a self-sustaining collaborative research space within CAPS—a central, active research space focused on bioinformatics and computational biology research and collaboration—where researchers could work surrounded by their peers across a variety of disciplines.”

The CCBL concept was inspired by the casual and dynamic environments of technology start-ups. At its center is a trans-disciplinary approach to education and research; it hosts faculty, postdocs, students—anyone with the required skill set and desire to contribute.

“This is a grand experiment aimed at catapulting Ohio State’s expertise in computational biology to a national level through fostering peer connectedness, deliberate creative problem solving, research acceleration, and idea incubation and exploration,” Grotewold said.

“We’ve gotten great feedback from Ohio State and from Cornell University’s Boyce-Thompson Institute, so we know we’re on the right track.”

The dedicated space in Rightmire is reserved for CCBL members—researchers who apply for membership and pay a nominal monthly fee to use the facility’s resources, which include digitally- expanded lab space with 24 hour video-linking capabilities, IT support staff, designated workstations and additional laptop and collaboration space.

Additionally, the CCBL provides problem-solving workshops; collaborative programming projects; and a shared research environment for students, postdocs and faculty to advance their research projects.

Faculty reviews are glowing:

David Mackey, associate professor; horticulture and crop science, and molecular genetics, said, "In common with many of my colleagues, my research group is generating large data sets which we struggle to fully utilize due to our lack of processing know-how and computational power. The CCBL provides an invaluable service to fill this critical need."

"The CCBL provides a collaborative training environment for our students and postdocs to advance their research projects,” said Jay Hollick, associate professor, molecular genetics. “We've not only utilized the shared computational resources currently available at the CCBL, we've also learned how to more effectively manage and analyze the increasing number of large datasets generated in our program. It's been tremendously valuable to us."

Kelly Wrighton, new assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology, said, “My laboratory uses meta-omics techniques to answer ‘who, does what, in microbial rhizosphere communities?’ As a new faculty member in microbiology, being able to have access to colleagues with shared expertise and resources at the CCBL factored heavily in my decision to come to Ohio State. The center is novel in academic institutions. The collective spirit of the CCBL enhances knowledge transfer and creative problem solving in bioinformatics research by leveraging existing and new approaches across disciplines. The CCBL creates a physical space for people working on computationally intensive projects to intellectually recharge, fueled by interactions with colleagues from other research areas. Collaborations with the CCBL faculty and staff enable faster and more creative solutions to research questions.”