UW Gets $25M For Genome Center

The University of Washington has been awarded a two-year, $25 million grant from the federal stimulus program to establish a new genome sequencing center to explore underlying causes of heart, lung, and blood diseases. The new UW center, to be led by scientist Deborah Nickerson, is one of two such sequencing centers being set up through the stimulus, along with one at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Six total grants worth a combined $64 million will go academic collaborators on the research, according to a statement from the National Institutes of Health. UW scientist Michael Bamshad is receiving a $5.2 million grant as part of the collaboration.

Author: Luke Timmerman

Luke is an award-winning journalist specializing in life sciences. He has served as national biotechnology editor for Xconomy and national biotechnology reporter for Bloomberg News. Luke got started covering life sciences at The Seattle Times, where he was the lead reporter on an investigation of doctors who leaked confidential information about clinical trials to investors. The story won the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award and several other national prizes. Luke holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and during the 2005-2006 academic year, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.