Biomedicine in Canada. Virtual institutes gear up to do real research.

As president of the new Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)--a collection of 13 virtual institutes based here that the government hopes will change the face of Canadian biomedical research--Alan Bernstein is in the enviable position of shaping an entire national research program from scratch. His goal is to strengthen Canadian biomedical research by earmarking as much as 30% of CIHR's overall budget for targeted research, rather than by creating a massive new infrastructure.