The grant, awarded to Rice after a competitive review process, represents a seventh renewal of support for a program that began more than 30 years ago to promote multidisciplinary training between researchers in computational and biological sciences. It will support eight PhD students and five postdoctoral fellows each year for five years. The program is one of only 18 in the U.S. and include those based at Columbia, Harvard, Stanford, and Yale universities.

The program will support research in healthcare/clinical informatics, translational bioinformatics, and clinical research informatics, according to the announcement. PhD students may compete for up to three years of support and postdoctoral fellows up to two years. About 240 trainees have been supported to date.

"We aspire to train a generation of scientists who are comfortable crossing traditional boundaries and who can find bold solutions to biomedical problems," Lydia Kavraki, program director of the NLMTP since 2015 and a professor of bioengineering, computer science, mechanical engineering, and electrical and computer engineering at Rice, said in a statement.