The complexities of medicine and biology provide a perfect chance for supercomputers to shine, said presenters at the National Science Foundation symposium on supercomputing on Thursday. But too little attention has been paid to that kind of research so far.
Stem cells, for instance, are hard to come by and are expensive, said Badri Roysam, a professor of electrical, computer, and systems engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute — not to mention the political controversy that surrounds them. Plugging their properties into a supercomputer can help researchers experiment with some aspects of stem cells without touching sensitive matter.
Typical three-dimensional renderings of stem cells by computers use maybe four different colors to identify different components of the cells, Mr. Roysam said. But there are over 10,000 different types of proteins that make up the cell, he said. Most of those 3-D pictures leave out most of what the cell is made of.
“These fields are ripe for cyber-enabled discoveries,” he said. “We need to understand how a complex and dynamic embryo goes about its business.”
Another presenter proposed using supercomputer algorithms to reduce the chaos in the typical hospital emergency room. Right now, hundreds of independent computer systems are monitoring patients’ vital signs, pumping medications, and handling communication between medical providers, said Insup Lee, a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania. Computer scientists should work with medical experts to get those computer processes to work more efficiently and communicate with each other.
“This is the way we need to think about these things,” he said. —Dan Carnevale
