Reed's Ruminations: A Blog by Dan Reed

Bridge Building: Medical Research and Computing

Let's start with a bit of history. Former NIH Director Harold Varmus charged a committee, co-chaired by Larry Smarr (then at NCSA, now at CalIT2) and David Botstein (Princeton), to explore the cultural barriers preventing greater collaboration between biomedical and computing researchers. Their 1999 report led to the Biomedical Information Science and Technology Initiative (BISTI). All of this was later the impetus for the NIH Roadmap Initiative and its emphasis on multidisciplinary science.

In Memoriam

Louvenia Reed
May 9, 1929-May 20, 2007
I mourn my mother, my friend

Happiness

I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell
me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though
I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

Carl Sandburg
Chicago Poems, 1916

Multicore: Our Software Crisis

As I’ve gotten older (note the photo of a bald guy above), I’ve come to realize why my grandfather and then my father often commented on some event by saying, “That reminds me of when …” As a boy, I rolled my eyes at these things, not seeing their relevance. Now, I recognize that age and experience do bring some ability to recognize current events as somewhat similar to previous ones. What’s it called? Ah, yes, they call it wisdom, I believe. Such is the case with multicore designs and our lamentable lack of parallel software and tools.

PCAST, NITRD and Medicine

The slides from my presentation at the President's Council of Science and Technology Advisors (PCAST) PCAST meeting last week are now up on the OSTP web site. I discussed the context for this presentation in an earlier post.