The Bioinformatics Core supports students, faculty, and researchers throughout the state and region with computational educational, training, platforms, and services related to biomedical research.

A primary focus of the Bioinformatics Core is support for the UALR/UAMS Graduate Program in Bioinformatics as well as the UALR Undergraduate Minor in Bioinformatics. The graduate program began officially in 2004 as a direct result of funding by the AR INBRE and offers both Master’s and Doctorate degrees in Bioinformatics (with a new emphasis in Medical and Health Informatics becoming available in 2012).

The Bioinformatics Core underwrites the activities of the MidSouth Bioinformatics Center at UALR (MBC). Students, faculty, and researchers make use of the consulting services, computational resources, skills workshops, reference library, and online knowledge base provided by the MBC. Workshops on LAMP technologies (Linus, Apache, MySQL, and Perl) and the R statistical analysis package are regular offerings. Many bioinformatics graduate students have assistantships working in the MBC which are sponsored by the Arkansas INBRE, the UALR College of Engineering and Information Technology, and the UAMS College of Medicine. Additionally, the MBC through the Bioinformatics Core provides major technical and strategic support to the MidSouth Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Society (MCBIOS), a regional society. This includes website services, maintaining listservs, underwriting an annual MCBIOS Board of Directors annual strategic planning retreat, and facilitating the attendance at the annual MCBIOS conference by Arkansas students and faculty.

The Bioinformatics Core supports the bioinformatics research efforts of the undergraduate faculty researchers sponsored by the Arkansas INBRE. Additionally, the Core interacts with students and faculty of Jackson State University in a significant minority-student-focused program in bioinformatics.