More scientific data has been collected in the last year
alone than in all previous years since science began, a
Johns Hopkins University scientist says.
Within databases crammed with those observations lie
discoveries waiting to be made — if, Alexander Szalay
says, researchers develop and learn how to use new
analytical tools that will sift those discoveries from a
seemingly overwhelming flow of information.
"Computer science has the potential to drastically change
the way we do science and the science that we do," said
Szalay, Alumni Centennial Professor of Astronomy in the
Henry A. Rowland
Department of Physics and Astronomy and a professor of
computer science.
"It will play a critical role in tackling the largest
challenges facing our world, from medicine and health to
energy and the environment."
Every area of science, Szalay said, is inundated with an
explosion of data. "It has become increasingly difficult to
analyze data as yesterday's gigabytes have grown into
today's terabytes," he said. "Soon, data sets will be
measured in petabytes."
To effectively analyze such massive amounts of information,
Szalay said, will require computing advances that transform
the scientific process over the next 15 years.
Szalay was one of 34 members of a 2020 Science Group that
recently published Towards 2020 Science, a comprehensive
analysis of computer science's potential to revolutionize
the way science is conducted. Published by Microsoft
Research Cambridge of the United Kingdom, the report
challenges the science and computer science communities to
partner with policy-makers and education leaders to realize
that potential.
Szalay has been working with Jim Gray of Microsoft for
nearly a decade on a variety of projects relevant to 2020
Science Group concerns about large data collections and
their impact on science. In addition, Szalay's group at
Johns Hopkins built the multiterabyte archive for the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey (known as the Cosmic Genome Project) and
also played a major role in the National Virtual
Observatory, an alliance to construct a system connecting
all astronomy data in the world. Szalay also has actively
collaborated with experts in Mechanical Engineering and
Computer Science at the Whiting School on advanced
simulations of turbulence, and with researchers in the
Krieger School's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
on a cutting-edge project to develop tiny wireless sensors
for environmental monitoring.
Szalay and other 2020 report contributors say that,
although much of the data explosion has happened primarily
in the physical and geo-sciences, it promises also to have
a profound effect on life sciences. These advances, they
say, will accelerate scientists' ability to address some of
the modern world's greatest challenges, such as global
epidemics and climate change. According to the report,
software tools and algorithms that enable far more accurate
and powerful modeling of complex systems will allow
researchers not only to more clearly map potential
epidemics, such as avian influenza, severe acute
respiratory syndrome and malaria, but also to potentially
avert disaster and improve response to real-time
outbreaks.
"Science will be increasingly done directly in the
database, finding relationships among existing data, while
someone or something else performs the primary collecting
role," reads an editorial on the subject in the March 23
issue of Nature, which included a number of articles
on the 2020 group's report and its impact. "And this means
that scientists will have to understand computer science in
much the same way as they previously had to understand
mathematics as a basic tool with which to do their
jobs."
The 2020 report makes a variety of recommendations,
including that society put a priority on science and
science-based innovation and that we find new ways to raise
public awareness about the importance of research. To that
end, Microsoft Research Cambridge will provide 2.5 million
euros (approximately $3.2 million) to the scientific
community to support new research that specifically
addresses areas outlined by the 2020 Science Group.