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Instruct Associate Centre |
Computational Centre for Integrated Structural Biology
(CCISB)
CCISB is a newly-established centre that provides computational
support to the European community of structural biologists across the
full range of disciplines, allowing a single point of access for
software and support, and encouraging standardisation between the
different disciplines.
The Centre consists of a hub hosted by the
Computational Science and Engineering Department of the STFC, and
located at the Research Complex at Harwell adjacent to the Diamond
synchrotron, together with nodes at Cambridge, York, STFC Daresbury
Laboratory and Bristol providing specific expertise. Initial
contributing groups include CCP4, CCPN, CCPB, PIMS and Diamond. As the
Centre develops, additional software groups from across Europe will be
included, either as formal nodes or as recognised collaborators,
reflecting the distributed nature of software development.
Within Instruct,
CCISB is an Associated Centre linked to the Core Centre at Oxford.
Details of the management of the Centre are
here.
Infrastructure offered within Instruct
The CCISB will provide a unified access mechanism for obtaining
software for structural biology. Delivery may be via downloadable
software (both individual packages and complete installations for
structural biology) or hosted web services. A generic data management
service, initially based on PiMS, will also be made available. These
services will be supported by a helpdesk, documentation and training.
Due to licensing requirements, it will be necessary for users to
register with the CCISB before accessing downloads and
services. Registration will be open to any international user. Details
of how to register will be announced shortly. One of the bottlenecks
in the take up of software is the training of users. Since we aim to
facilitate the wider use of multiple disciplines, this factor becomes
ever more critical. The contributing groups of CCISB have strong track
records in training, and this expertise will be transferred to the
Centre. We aim to run 2 computational schools each year under the
auspices of CCISB. As the Centre develops, there will be an
increasing emphasis on cross-disciplinary projects with the aim of
facilitating the use of multiple techniques (data conversion, common
user interfaces, etc.).
A new site is under development
to provide these services.
CCISB Helpdesk
For information about CCISB, or more general enquiries about software
for structural biology, please contact our
helpdesk.
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