University at Buffalo (UB)
Barry Smith receives NIH grant for work on Protein Ontology
Barry Smith
Published August 10, 2015 This content is archived.
Barry Smith has received a grant from the NIH (National Institute for General Medical Science) for work on the Protein Ontology (PRO). The grant provides $321K total direct costs over four years to support work by Barry and his collaborators Alex Diehl and Alan Ruttenberg on the logic of the PRO and on its interrelations with the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and with BFO-based ontologies in areas such as drug discovery, neurology and disease.
National Institute for General Medical Sciences
The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) is one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIGMS supports basic research and training nationwide, increasing our understanding of biological processes and laying the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention.
In Fiscal Year 2014, the NIGMS budget was $2.366 billion. The vast majority of this money goes into local economies through grants to scientists at universities, medical schools, hospitals and other research institutions throughout the country.
At any given time, NIGMS supports more than 3,000 investigators and 4,500 research grants—approximately 10.5 percent of the grants funded by NIH as a whole. NIGMS also supports approximately 26 percent of the trainees who receive assistance from NIH.
Barry Smith is SUNY Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University at Buffalo and Director of the National Center for Ontological Research.