Science Opportunities Fund - Round One
Genome BC aims to catalyze or seed new programs and initiatives of strategic importance to the BC life sciences community through the Science Opportunities Fund (SOF). The SOF fills a much needed funding gap with an initial investment of $2 million, half of which is provided by Genome BC. The program supports modest endeavours typically in the range of $25,000-$200,000, and no more than $400,000 with one-time funding and that cannot be funded in whole or in part, through traditional mechanisms.

This program aims to support BC researchers by:

• Increasing access to emerging technologies in the genome sciences being developed nationally or internationally, in order to maintain their competitiveness;
• Fostering partnerships with national and international stakeholders in the genome sciences; and,
• Facilitating new and innovative means of interactions with industry or other end-users of genome sciences.

The first round of funding through the SOF program was announced on October 27, 2008.  Nine teams of researchers from Vancouver, the Okanagan and Vancouver Island were awarded a combined total of $2.3 million from Genome BC and other co-funders. These projects include:

• Flow-sorting facility at the BC Cancer Agency
• Development of a health assessment tool for marine mussels (Myt-OME)
• Mycorrhizal Fungal Ecology: A Genomic Approach for Improved Forest Management
• frogSCOPE (frog Sentinel species Comparative "Omics" for the Environment)
• Conifer Genome Exploration
• Sablefish Genomics
• Development of Efficient Algorithms and Technologies for Structural Variation Detection by Single Molecule Sequencing
• BC BioLibrary/CAE (Centre for Applied Ethics) Project: Guidelines, Protocols and Policies
• Building the Genomics Toolbox for Lavenders