Bioinformatics Science is now facing a deluge of data that is changing drastically the customs of the community. Most common analyses have evolved to a larger scale, for example from the study of a single gene/protein to a whole genome/proteome or several genomes at the same time. And such scientific needs imply to have efficient and scalable technologies to handle and analyze these biological data, what we could call "greedy" Bioinformatics.
I am leading the scientific platform Infrastructure Distributed for Biology [idee-b.ibcp.fr] , running since 2011 and dealing with different fields relative to scientific computing in Biology associated to the Research Infrastructures (French and European) : large-scale bioinformatics, big data, scientific gateways, grid and cloud computing, etc. As a permanent member of the French "Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique" (CNRS), I am working at the "Institut de Biologie et Chimie des Protéines" (IBCP, Lyon, France). And I am currently involved in two major research projects: the StratusLab European project (EU FP7, 2010-2012, www.stratuslab.eu) and the French project MapReduce (ANR ARPEGE, 2010-2013, mapreduce.inria.fr).
Since 2001, I have spent a part of my time studying distributed computing technologies and their application to Biology and Bioinformatics. Such computing technologies that could be very usefull to build a Research Infrastructure for Bioinformatics are of course grid computing, and now cloud computing that is showing very promising functionalities. But yet none of them are completely mature and providing answers to all the requirement of Bioinformatics. I was participating to several projects (some of them closed now) such as GriPPS, e-Toile, Datagrid, EMBRACE, EGEE, HIPCAL, GRISBI, StratusLab and MapReduce. For more details, please have a look at the IDB platform page.
I was also at the initiative, in 2007, and now leading the GRISBI - Grid Support to Bioinformatics - transversal project of the French Bioinformatics network RENABI. Its main goal is to set up a distributed computing infrastructure at the national level, by bringing together existing resources from the bioinformatics center. This infrastructure will make easier the distribution and usage of biological data across the research sites and then make possible challenging bioinformatics applications dealing with large scale biological systems [www.grisbio.fr ].
Last but not least, the other part of my work is the responsibility of the IBCP's computing infrastructure (systems and network administration, security of Information system, Web mail DNS servers and so on). I am also giving lectures about Bioinformatics and distributed computing to postgraduate students.
Contact
Christophe BLANCHET
E-mail: christophe.blanchet -at- ibcp.fr
Infrastructure Distribuée pour la Biologie [go]
CNRS IBCP FR 3302, 7 passage du Vercors, 69007 LYON, FRANCE