1. Arthur W. Toga University of California Los Angeles

2. Introduction 21 st Century science and biomedicine is digital Genetic data, medical imaging, phenotypes, epidemiology Geospatial, embedded sensing, census data, etc Digital information is fast exceeding our ability to make sense of it all Computers are ubiquitous but most are not powerful enough to overcome the data explosion, e.g. in biomedicine Need to actively leverage data, computation, and integrative models to drive new discovery and new paradigms Need for a new breed of UCLA researcher: The scientific informaticist

3. The Institute for Informatics (i 2 ) The Institute for Informatics (i 2 ) seeks to bring to bear leading informatics talent, computation, and algorithm design to the challenges of biomedicine Seeks to provide leading example for data integration, modeling, and prediction of trends in health and disease Built following a successful multidisciplinary model: LONI Serve as a nexus for biomedical informatics research, scholarship, training, and service Provide core informatics resources for UCLA funded projects and grant proposals

4. Informatics Projects Aims to support maximum of 3 active domains: Biomedicine (genetics, brain imaging, medical records) TBD Selection for i 2 and productivity = External Support With external funding, a project with a domain rotates off and a new project/domain is selected

5. Status (6 months) Support of UCLA DGSOM leadership Space in NRB is available and “shovel-ready” Architectural/Infrastructural plans in place Working with UCLA Capital Programs $2 million in NIH funding in place for computational grid Purchase to be completed in March 2010 Private funding being pursued Philanthropy proposal (x2) Leading UCLA faculty engaged Initial Projects: Human Connectome Project (U54) Hospital Records Informatics ENIGMA gene SNP sharing for neuroscience meta-analyses Biomedical Resource Discovery (U24)

6. Conclusions The Institute for Informatics (i 2 ) provides leading informatics talent, infrastructure, and algorithm design to the challenges of biomedicine and beyond Serves as a leading example for data integration, modeling, and prediction of trends in health and disease Provides core informatics infrastructure and intellectual expertise for across a variety of scientific projects Tightly coupled to UCLA education, research, and service