We are laying the grounds for the future of precision medicine and modern biotechnologies in Armenia!

From science fiction to reality, modern science is paving the way to exciting times for the future. And the future is coming faster than you think thanks to bioinformatics.

Faster breakthroughs in science and medicine

Meet bioinformatics: the study of living things coupled with the processing speed and accuracy of computers. What would have taken scientists years to discover can now be processed faster and smarter with the power of supercomputers.

Bioinformatics has become an integral part of modern science leading to amazing breakthroughs in personalized medicine, curing diseases, drug discovery, and improved agriculture.

Why is bioinformatics important?

Precision medicine

With the progress of diagnostic and molecular tools in medicine, scientists can now dig deeper into understanding the unique genetic makeup of each person. This genetic information can then be analyzed through bioinformatics to develop targeted and personalized medical interventions to prevent diseases and speed up recovery.

Pharmaceutical and Drug Discovery

Developing medication and vaccination for diseases and disorders is a lengthy process that involves years of research. Bioinformatics speeds up this process by applying this computational power to predicting likely drug candidates by analyzing how a compound would work.

Better food and agriculture

Bioinformatics can help improve the safety, quality, and quantity of food. With climate change looming at large, bioinformatics can also be an important tool in discovering new ways to make agriculture more sustainable and resistant to extreme conditions and agricultural pests.

Collective knowledge repository

Scientific progress has become exponential throughout this last decade with bioinformatics since the biological data and knowledge generated by scientists can be publicly shared and accessed throughout the world.

Armenia: a land filled with genomic potential

Biological data is everywhere! It’s huge, diverse, raw, and messy. But it takes the right sort of instruments and trained people to properly process it to turn it into something useful.

The biodiversity of Armenia is still uncharted territory filled with potential solutions to the problems the world is facing today, from climate change to food shortage and scary pandemics.

Author of the text: Joseph Sahakian

Why do we need your help now?

We need a computing infrastructure with large memory and computing power to perform data analysis for our projects

The speed of bioinformatics to run through humongous and complex data ultimately relies on a powerful infrastructure. Computing infrastructure is basically made up of physical and virtual parts that work together to perform complicated operations as quickly as possible. Think of a mobile phone with several apps open and thousands of pictures inside of it: the phone is less likely to crash at some point if it has an enormous memory (both in the device and on a cloud).

Currently, ABI has joined forces with IMB and IIAP institutes in Armenia to provide computing resources. However, as the number of researchers and students continues to grow, these resources have reached their maximum capacity.

A new infrastructure with larger memory and computing power will support ABI's mission to create unprecedented opportunities for students, researchers, and bioinformaticians. Thus leading to better education, quality research, an improved economy, and eventually, a better future.

Technical details

The proposed computing infrastructure will serve research and educational purposes and will support around 20 researchers and more than 40 students initially. For its implementation, we will obtain a hardware set-up with 128 cores, 48 TB hard drive storage (with an option for expansion), and 1TB of random access memory (with an opportunity for further expansion), as well as hire and train a system administrator to support cloud sharing and software/database setup specific for bioinformatics applications, in collaboration with our international partners. 

Impact

• About 30 biologists and 40 students will receive access to the infrastructure annually.
• In the first, second, third, and subsequent years of using the infrastructure, we will publish 3, 5, 10, and 10+ articles in peer-reviewed journals, respectively.
• We will develop at least 2-5 public tools for analyzing genomic datasets every year.
• At least two system administrators will be trained in cooperation with the project’s international partners.
• About 20 young scientists will receive extensive training in computational genomics and bioinformatics.
• During the first five years of using the infrastructure, we will engage in and support more than 20 bioinformatics projects in cooperation with Armenian institutions. This will dramatically increase the scientific return of these projects.
• Within five years, the talents and opportunities we will create within the framework of this project will attract at least two modern biotech companies to Armenia.

About us

We are a team of bioinformatics researchers and industry representatives working at the Armenian Bioinformatics Institute. We have around 20 experts, some with 20+ years of experience in the field, some with 10+, and some with 5+. And this year, we have managed to grow bioinformatics talent and engage 18 more students and young researchers! During the first year of establishment, we have increased the number of bioinformatics researchers in Armenia 4 times, sealed a deal with 2 industry collaborators from the US and the UK, and published 6 papers! All of these are the results of us all - in Armenia and abroad - uniting our forces to achieve a well-understood goal. Will you join forces with us too? 

This project supports:

Sustainable Development Goals

The Future Armenian goals