IBM, and the University of Calgary in Canada, have established a five-year collaboration to accelerate and expand genomic research into common childhood conditions such as autism, and congenital diseases.

As part of the collaboration, IBM will augment the existing research capacity at the Cumming School of Medicine’s Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute by installing a Power8-based computing and storage infrastructure along with advanced analytics and cognitive computing software.

IBM is one of Canada’s top ten private R&D investors, and in 2015 contributed more than $477 million to Canadian research activities.