Purpose. The Centers of Excellence in Genomic Sciences (CEGS) program establishes academic Centers for advanced genome research. Each CEGS grant supports a multi-investigator, interdisciplinary team to develop innovative genomic approaches to address a particular biological problem. A CEGS project will address a critical issue in genomic science, proposing a solution that would be a very substantial advance. Thus, the research conducted at these Centers will entail substantial risk, balanced by outstanding scientific and management plans and very high potential payoff. A CEGS will focus on the development of novel technological or computational methods for the production or analysis of comprehensive data sets, or on a particular genome-scale biological problem, or on other ways to develop and use genomic approaches for understanding biological systems. Exploiting its outstanding scientific plan and team, each CEGS will nurture genomic science at its institution by facilitating the interaction of investigators from different disciplines, and by providing training of new investigators will expand the pool of professional genomics scientists and engineers.