A collaboration between the Scripps Research Institute and IBM ... Scientists are waiting to hear back on their grant application to the NIH.

Nanochick wrote:

This is a very interesting project - if anyone hears anything more about this, please post.

The evidence shows that the scientists have not yet won the grants on which the project relies for implementation of the Florida-based computing infrastructure. (According to the original schedule, Phase 1, for 2007, was to be 4 racks, each with a terabyte of memory and 2,000 processors. In 2008, Phase 2 expands computer capacity to 22 computer racks. In 2009-2011, the system was to grow to 84 racks.) According to news in November 2007, IBM has handed off part of its role in the project to Florida Atlantic University. This article says, "Howard Hanson, FAU associate vice president of research, ... knows he's got a tough sell, with property taxes still a thorny issue." Now, FAU would host the infrastructure, and IBM would be available for consulting. The article continues, with perhaps more local politics than you care about:

When Checkmate originally went before the county 15 months ago, it made a favorable impression with commissioners, who liked the idea that most of the money to build a supercomputer in Boca Raton would come from federal coffers.

Commissioner Burt Aaronson said at the time that the IBM/Scripps project made more sense than a proposal then being considered for the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies, which ultimately went to Port St. Lucie: "To me, that's a more humanitarian thing."

Since then, the commission has changed. It has two new members - Bob Kanjian and Jess Santamaria. And the county's budget is tighter.

Hanson said FAU has met with county staffers on a preliminary basis but won't take any proposal to the commission until next year. In the meantime, County Administrator Bob Weisman warned that the county is facing limitations.

"With the state's budget and Max Planck's proposal before the county, there are some challenges for them getting these funds," Weisman said. "We feel we've scrounged money together for Max Planck, and the question is, can we continue to do that?"

Two of the people who were named as principals have since moved on to other companies. In the announcement in February 2006, Nick Tsinoremas and Pete Martinez are pictured with Jeb Bush. By July 2007, Tsinoremas had left Scripps for the University of Miami, and by November 2007, Martinez had retired from IBM. It seems the IBM technical PI, Ajay Royyuru [2,3], is still at IBM, but The Genographic Project seems to be the dominant activity. The "Global Pandemic Initiative", of which Checkmate was to be a part, seems not to have developed into anything of note, although in 2007, IBM researchers posted a presentation and a paper about The Race Against Bird Flu: Science and Technology Versus H5N1.

The article quoted above explained that Scripps researchers "continue to work slowly on the science side as they await review of an NIH grant proposal." In terms of their recent peer-reviewed research, there is Phage escape libraries for checkmate analysis, published in June 2007. This was later summarized by the editor in a short piece for Nature Methods and again in Nature in late July 2007.

The current work of these researchers is Biologically templated organic polymers with nanoscale order, which is looking into self-assembly of synthetic bacteriophages. Last year Dickerson published two papers on Botulinum neurotoxin, but none on influenza. Janda seems to have moved on to anthrax.

There is apparently a debate within the community about relative research priorities between offensive weapons and natural pandemic disease. This might partially explain why the federal grant proposals are in limbo.

RE: Scientists plot first moves for Project Checkmate