Simbios is the NIH Center for physics-based Simulation of Biological Structures. Simbios provides infrastructure, software, and training to help biomedical researchers understand biological form and function as they create novel drugs, synthetic tissues, medical devices, and surgical interventions.

Simbios is investigating a wide scale of biological structures - from molecules to organisms. Driving biological problems include RNA folding, myosin dynamics, cardiovascular dynamics, and neuromuscular biomechanics. Investigators interested in collaborating with Simbios can apply for NIH funding.

Simbios is developing and disseminating the SimTK simulation toolkit. SimTK is open-source software developed by experienced professionals. The software will include advanced capabilities for modeling the geometry and physics of biological systems – as well as integrating and comparing simulation results with experimental data. SimTK seeks to be fast, efficient, and easy-to-use. To ensure utility and accuracy, the software and training material is being developed and tested in close collaboration with biomedical scientists.

To encourage collaboration in building accurate biological models and simulations, Simbios also provides the biomedical community with www.simtk.org, a free, secure, distributed, development system for projects. Projects may include models, software, data, documentation, publications, and graphics and have automatic backups and off-site storage. Projects may be public or private and have project-specific mailing lists, forums, bug & feature databases, news, blogs, and source-code repositories.

Simbios also provides a broad dissemination effort, including the Biomedical Computation Review, a magazine devoted to the science and tools in biocomputation; Simbiome an inventory of high-quality commercial and academic bio-simulation tools; curriculum material; and onsite and distance training to biomedical scientists and students.

In the context of other NIH centers concentrating on complementary elements of biomedicine, Simbios is focused on the physical reality of biological structures and provides a critical piece of a national biomedical computing infrastructure.