BIOLOGY

Dr. Raymond L. Orbach, Director of the Office of the Under Secretary for Science at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), presented the keynote address “From Data to Discovery” at the DICE Alliance 07 conference in Springfield, Ohio on May 8. The DICE Alliance 07, hosted by Avetec's Data Intensive Computing Environment Program, had 200 attendees from corporations and government agencies to the symposium to discuss the future of high performance computing. Attendees included GE, Pratt & Whitney, P&G, IBM, U.S. DOE and NASA. Dr. Orbach congratulated Avetec on 'taking the lead' to collaborate in advanced scientific computing research, one of seven areas he identified as crucial to maintaining American leadership in science and innovation. "At some point, the human mind just says 'forget it'. This is just too hard," said Dr. Orbach. "We are approaching the point where it's impossible to handle this in a human way." Dr. Orbach identified seven areas essential to maintaining American leadership in science and innovation: 1. Advanced Scientific Computing Research 2. Basic Energy Sciences 3. Biological and Environmental Sciences 4. Fusion Energy Sciences 5. High Energy Physics 6. Nuclear Physics 7. Workforce Development "Several of those points fit right in with the mission of Avetec and DICE, particularly advanced scientific computing research and workforce development," said Robert Evans Miller, President and CEO of Avetec. Dr. Orbach pointed out the three pillars of scientific discovery: experimentation, theory and simulation and compared them to "finding the dots, connecting the dots and understanding the dots." To find the dots one must collect the data, to connect the dots, it takes HPC, and to understand the dots people need to make sense of the data, which is the goal of the Data Intensive Computing Environment (DICE). Dr. Orbach explained that to understand data, you have to find exemplars – representative pieces of meaning in a vast sea of data – that point you in the direction to discovery. He explained that the path forward will be found by partnering across disciplines – institutions, industries and government – which is the model on which the DICE Program is based. "It's an American ideal that competitiveness is a joint operation between industry and institutions."