RWTH Aachen University and Bayer Technology Services (BTS) have founded the Joint Research Centre on Computational Biomedicine.
The Centre will be headed by Professor Andreas Schuppert, an expert in industrial mathematics at Bayer Technology Services and university professor at the Aachen Institute for Advanced Study in Computational Engineering Science, RWTH Aachen University in Germany. He will collaborate with another professor, who has yet to be appointed. The partnership aims to develop new methods of computer-based modelling of complex biological processes.
The Centre initially will have a staff of around 10, and aims to become one of the leading institutions in Europe by 2018. It is a component of both the Research Cluster for Modelling and Simulation and the Faculty of Medicine at RWTH Aachen University.
'The mathematical modelling and simulation of complex biological processes is the key to developing completely novel medicines and therapies,' said Professor Ernst Schmachtenberg, Rector of RWTH Aachen University.'Many companies and research facilities are already working in this relatively young scientific discipline, but there isn't a comparable collaboration anywhere with such a broad base of expertise and experience with taking basic research into practice.
Without computers we shall never fully understand diseases or climate changes
Professor Wolfgang Plischke, member of the Bayer AG Board of Management responsible for Technology, added: 'Bayer is the only company of its size to combine research and development in the fields of human, animal and crop health. Knowledge of the molecular mechanisms in biology is therefore of high strategic relevance for our life science units. We want to enlarge our competence in this field together with the RWTH Aachen.'
Professor Stefan Uhlig, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at RWTH Aachen University and Member of the Board of the University Hospital RWTH Aachen, said without computers we shall never fully understand diseases or climate changes.
'The complexity is simply too big. This research will not only help to shed light on fundamental physiological processes, it will also help us to understand better a multitude of diseases. This, in turn, enables new active ingredients to be developed more quickly and to be used more precisely during a course of treatment,' he said.