Red Hat to Open Office, Base Employees at N.C. Research Campus

Raleigh, N.C. — Red Hat will open an office at the North Carolina Research Campus as part of its efforts to expand use of open source solutions in biotech and life science research.

The Linux software developer and solutions provider said Wednesday that it planned to work with “public and private sector” tenants at the campus on bioinformatics, biotechnology and other initiatives.

“Red Hat will have employees located in Kannapolis full-time, but the number expected and the date on which our presence will begin is not yet available,” a Red Hat spokesperson told WRAL Local Tech Wire.

The Research Campus is being built over 350 acres at the site of a former textile plant in Kannapolis. It is being largely financed by billionaire David Murdock, owner of Dole Foods and Castle & Cooke, the development firm building the project.

"Science seeks solutions to the challenges that confront humanity. The research campus seeks solutions to the challenges that confront science. Partnerships such as the UNC system collaborating with Red Hat will bring those solutions more quickly," Murdock said in a statement.

The University of North Carolina system, North Carolina State, UNC Chapel Hill and several other universities are also partners in the project.

“Our goal is to make collaboration and open source come to life in the field of clinical research,” said Joanne Rohde, executive vice president of operations for Red Hat, in a statement.

“With our partners, we will identify specific projects where the sharing of information will lead to better, more accurate research,” she added. “In turn this research will enable real-life solutions to be developed across both the public and private sector at the North Carolina Research Campus.”

Red Hat’s participation was announced at a ceremony in Kannapolis where the UNC Nutrition Research Institute building was “topped off” and groundbreaking took place for the North Carolina State University Institute of Advanced Fruit and Vegetable Science.

A UNC official said using open source software could accelerate research in life sciences.

“The biggest challenge for researchers interested in proving the benefits of new technologies in the future is to speed the whole process up,” said Etta Pisano, Vice Dean for Academic Affairs and Kenan Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering at the UNC Biomedical Research Imaging Center.

“We need to know what works faster, better and cheaper than we could do so in the past. That means collecting data from more sources, not just in teaching hospitals as part of federally funded clinical trials, but in all settings where new technologies are being used, private practices, health departments, health education centers and walk-in clinics,” he added.

"I believe that the best tool to link such widely different settings with widely different technology needs will be open source software. Such software will allow healthcare providers in multiple locations to share clinical data more effectively, more quickly and at a lower cost, while not sacrificing patient privacy.”
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