Seminar:New Architectures for a New Biology

Dear All CSAIL members,

You may find the following talk interesting. David Shaw is the founder of one of the most successful hedge funds and is also a parallel processor expert.

You do not have to register to listen to this talk.

Arvind and Larry



Keynote Talk - ICS05 (International Conference of Supercomputing) - David E. Shaw (D. E. Shaw)

Wednesday, June 22 - 8:30 am The Cambridge Marriott - 2nd floor

David E. Shaw, chairman of D. E. Shaw Group, will be giving the Keynote Talk at the ICS05 Conference (International Conference of Supercomputing) on Wednesday, June 22 at 8:30 am at the Cambridge Marriott (Arvind - General Chair-ICS05, Larry Rudolph - Program Chair-ICS05).

All members of CSAIL are welcome to attend. After many years involved with research in the field of parallel processing, and teaching in the Computer Science Department at Columbia University, David went on to found the D. E. Shaw group, a specialized investment and technology development firm.

New Architectures for a New Biology

David E. Shaw

D. E. Shaw Research and Development and Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Columbia University

Abstract

Some of the most important outstanding questions in the fields of biology, chemistry, and medicine remain unsolved as a result of our limited understanding of the structure, behavior and interaction of biologically significant molecules. The laws of physics that determine the form and function of these biomolecules are well understood. Current technology, however, does not allow us to simulate the effect of these laws with sufficient accuracy, and for a sufficient period of time, to answer many of the questions that biologists, biochemists, and biomedical researchers are most anxious to answer. This talk will describe the current state of the art in biomolecular simulation and explore the potential role of high-performance computing technologies in extending current capabilities. Efforts within our own lab to develop novel architectures and algorithms to accelerate molecular dynamics simulations by several orders of magnitude will be described, along with work by other researchers pursuing alternative approaches. If such efforts ultimately prove successful, one might imagine the emergence of an entirely new paradigm in which computational experiments take their place alongside those conducted in “wet” laboratories as central tools in the quest to understand living organisms at a molecular level, and to develop safe, effective, precisely targeted medicines capable of relieving suffering and saving human lives.