The CCB focuses on a set of areas within computational biology associated with the analysis of genome sequences and functional relationships between sequence and function at the molecular and cellular level. These areas are undergoing revolutionary change at this time because of the exponential growth of experimental data about living systems, and new avenues of inquiry have become tractable as their scale has been matched by new computational methods and the increasing power of available computers. Here we provide a few examples of problems in the subfields of genomic analysis and discuss the prospects for continuing innovation and discovery.
By focusing on areas with potential for rapid and sustained intellectual growth, the CCB will bring computational biology at UC Berkeley to a new level. To lead the field, we aim to create a major thrust in genomic analysis and allied areas of mathematics, statistics and systems modeling. With a nucleus of world-recognized computational biology faculty and substantial strength in allied areas of biology, computer science, statistics, and mathematics we will anticipate and respond to new intellectual problems as the field develops. As the inevitable explosion of experimental and computational methods makes it increasingly possible to link genomic and molecular data to the cellular, system and organismal scales, we will increase our emphasis on those areas.