Preparing for “2020 Science”
 |
“It has become increasingly difficult to analyze data as yesterday's gigabytes have grown into today's terabytes....Soon, data sets will be measured in petabytes.” — Astronomy Professor Alexander Szalay PHOTO MIKE CIESIELKSI |
More scientific data has been collected in the last year alone than in all previous years since science began, says Alexander Szalay, the Alumni Centennial Professor of Astronomy in the Krieger School.
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 will require computing advances that transform the scientific process over the next 15 years.
"Computer science has the potential to drastically change the way we do science and the science that we do," says Szalay, "It will play a critical role in tackling the largest challenges facing our world, from medicine and health to energy and the environment."
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, the report challenges the science and computer science communities to partner with policymakers 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 in the Krieger School built the multi-terabyte 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 Johns Hopkins' Whiting School of Engineering on advanced simulations of turbulence, and with researchers in the 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. According to the report, these advances will accelerate scientists' ability to address some of the modern world's greatest challenges, such as global epidemics and climate change. 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, they say, but also to potentially avert disaster and improve response to real-time outbreaks.
