Initiative in Innovative Computing (IIC) newsletter
Open House - Data Intensive Science
May 23, 2008; 11:00am
60 Oxford Street, Room 330 [Location details]
Lincoln Greenhill, Senior Research Fellow/Radio Astronomer, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)
Abstract
The physical and life sciences face a “data deluge.” Computing requirements are described in erms of trillions of bytes and arithmetic operations today, and quintillions of bytes and operations omorrow. Astronomers mapping the early universe will soon face a hundred-gigabit-per-second, 24/7 tream of data that must be transformed into images in real time. Neuroscientists studying just a ubic centimeter of brain tissue must visualize peta— and exabyte data volumes with resolution panning five orders of magnitude. And quantum chemists predicting the properties of catalysts and iomolecules face the task of integrating Schrödinger’s Equation in a computation that scales xponentially with the number of atoms. This is Data-Intensive Science. These (and more) are problems that face Harvard researchers. The IIC supports projects that confront serious computing challenges in diverse science disciplines, seeking linkage through common tools and approaches. The whole is reater than the sum of the parts.