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Middle Atlantic Regional Center of Excellence

The Middle-Atlantic Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases Research (MARCE) focuses on research to enable rapid defenses against bioterror and emerging infectious diseases. Fourteen universities, seven government partners, and ten corporate partners are working together to improve our nation's public health response system. Specific diseases under investigation include Anthrax, West Nile Virus, Smallpox, and Cryptosporidiosis, among others. The team is also working on needle-free vaccinations and new diagnostic tools.

The MARCE consists of six major research areas, as described in the Research section of this site. Three core facilities provide cutting-edge scientific platforms to support these research projects. The project includes direct interactions with government, industry, and other regional RCE partners. The administrative core provides over-overarching guidance to the researchers.

Latest News

News Archive

Dr. Geddes Receives "Innovator of the Year" Award

Dr. Geddes, Professor and Director of the Institute of Fluorescence and member of the Middle Atlantic Regional Center of Excellence (MARCE) Diagnostics Research Program, received the Daily Records' "Innovator of the Year" award on October 15, 2008. The award was given to Dr. Geddes for his MARCE project on a 100-copy, 20-second Anthrax diagnostic sensing platform.

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MARCE Bioinformatics Online Tutorial

The MARCE Bioinformatics Online Tutorial is now available! The tutorial consists of an introduction to VBI, an introduction to multi-faceted bioinformatics analysis, and a review of key theory and tools for bioinformatics research, including Search, Alignment, Phylogeny, Hidden Markov Models, Orthologous Clusters and Genome Comparison. The course presents the available bioinformatics resources and tools, using Francisella tularensis as the example organism, and contains exercises to give the user some hands-on experience.
To access the course, please visit the following website ( http://staff.vbi.vt.edu/cbyrd/bioinformatics_tutorial/).

The website contains a description of the course, as well as instructions for gaining access to the course.