U receives $5 million, announces new bioinformatics initiative

President Bob Bruininks announced a new initiative, the Consortium for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, which will be funded with $5 million in settlement money from Microsoft Corp. and $5 million in matching funds from the University. Microsoft's payment comes from the April 2004 settlement agreement of an antitrust class action lawsuit the State of Minnesota had brought against Microsoft Corp. The University was not a plaintiff in the case.

As part of the settlement, the University received $2.5 million in cash and $2.5 million in product vouchers to be used by the University's Institute of Technology (IT).