The TAMU-BWG is a product of recent initiatives on the Texas A&M campus to stimulate innovative research by promoting interdisciplinary, collaborative projects in bioinformatics.

    With initial funding from a Texas A&M Interdisciplinary Research Initiative Grant, the TAMU-BWG established a working base in 1995. This involved personnel and facilities associated with the Texas A&M Colleges of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Engineering, and Science.  Projects to date have been supported by grants to Principal Investigators from all three TAMU Colleges, Texas A&M University, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, and the National Science Foundation.  Proposals seeking support for extended TAMU-BWG research are now in preparation and user suggestions for funding sources or opportunities are appreciated.

    Research activities of the TAMU-BWG are based on the presence of significant problems in the general area of bioinformatics data development/presentation and the potential for efficient solutions offered by the World Wide Web (WWW).  Full and efficient exploitation of this potential requires research-level expertise with both the problem and the solution.  Thus, the TAMU-BWG operates within an academic 'hybrid zone' that lies between Life and Computer Sciences and Engineering.  Operations involve group meetings and on-going dialog via the BWG mailserver.  These exchanges, often involving 'translations' between the languages of both areas, establish research targets/priorities, monitor progress with on-going projects, and generate methods and protocols.  Currrent TAMU-BWG products on-line, at various stages of development and involving a suite of collaborators, find expanding usage from the internet community, a factor that helps define both research direction and progress (currect access statistics).