HPCwire: Rick Stevens: Connecting Computing to Science

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March 09, 2007

Rick Stevens: Connecting Computing to Science

by Michael Feldman, HPCwire Editor

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Perhaps the two most important technologies of the 21st century will be information technology and biotechnology. Certainly they have become the most rapidly expanding domains of our era. The advancements in devices such as microarray biochips, medical imaging, and mass spectrometers have created a wealth of biological data to be analyzed. The result is that, increasingly, biological problems now require large scale computing. In a sense, life science has become a sub-domain of information science.

Expressions such as bioinformatics, computational biology and systems biology are being used to describe this new integration. And research organizations are actively exploring problems within the intersection of biology and computer science.

At the Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, the Computing and Life Sciences (CLS) directorate is attempting to synergize these two technologies to fulfill the department's mission. At Argonne, the integration of computational science with systems biology is designed to help build basic scientific knowledge, solve environmental problems related to energy production, and develop and manage new energy sources.

Heading the CLS directorate is Rick Stevens, a man who seems perfectly suited for the type of interdisciplinary work that the organization is doing. There, he is able to indulge his deep interests in algorithms, math and science, especially biological science.

As a scientist, Stevens is hard to categorize. In fact, he himself is not a great believer in distinct scientific disciplines. According to him, calling yourself a biologist, a chemist or a computer science is a just way people self-identify with a community. But these disciplines have become a rather artificial way to view the world. There are just people and problems, he says.

"I've always been interested in trying to connect computing to science," says Stevens. "But I'm not that interested in computing for computing's sake."

As a kid, Stevens was very much attracted to computing as it was portrayed on Star Trek. In the 23rd century, computers were things you used to do exciting things, like computing wormhole trajectories. In the 21st century, we'll have to be satisfied with sub-warp applications. But that still leaves plenty to do.

According to Stevens, putting biology and computing under the same lab directorate is a kind of experiment. By forging these cross-cultural relationships, they want to see if the sum is greater than the parts. Since Stevens is personally aligned with this intersection of computing and biology, to him the challenges are not only some of the most interesting problems in the world, but also are just great fun.

As one might imagine, the life of the head of an DOE lab directorate can be rather intense. It's not unusual for Stevens to be up at 5:00 AM. At that ungodly hour, he tries to pound out a little code, which he mostly writes in C, Perl, Python or Mathematica. He says he's also learning a little UPC.

"If I spend a couple of hours in the morning writing code, I'm a much more cheerful person the rest of the day," notes Stevens.

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