Computational Science
The Beagle Supercomputer Navigates the World of Biomedical Data
A look at how UChicago researchers are using one of the world’s most powerful biomedical supercomputers.
A Big Boost for Big Data at UChicago
Two major gifts will build momentum behind the University of Chicago’s leadership in biomedical computation by assembling experts in the field and furnishing them with the tools to use “big data” to understand disease and solve today’s health-related challenges.
Sabermetrics for Scientists
This post originally ran on the Computation Institute website. The last decade has seen a statistical revolution in sports, where new, smarter measures of player performance in baseball, football, or soccer are replacing more traditional stats. Often known as “sabermetrics” in tribute to the Society for American Baseball Research, advanced statistics such as VORP, BABIP, and […]
Summer in the Research Lab
For many college students, summer means heading back home to Mom and Dad’s house, hanging around and wishing you were back at school with your friends. Maybe you take a class or two, or work some menial job to make spending money for the fall (I spent the summer after my freshman year washing cars […]
Imaging Software That Learns By Example
How does a machine learn? Asking that question brings up visions of artificial intelligence and robots like C3PO or the Terminator, but computer software that “learns” from data is no longer the realm of science fiction. Huge data centers at Amazon analyze what you browse and buy on their website to suggest other items you […]
LabBook July 20, 2012
Welcome to LabBook, our weekly roundup of University of Chicago Medicine & Biological Sciences research news from around campus and the world wide web. Each Friday, LabBook will recap the week on the blog, link to news stories about our faculty and studies, and briefly summarize a handful of recent publications by our researchers. THE […]
When Art and Science Meet Halfway
by Rob Mitchum Too often, art and science are treated as intellectual adversaries. Educational systems typically route students toward one pole or the other, with the artistic and scientific spheres rarely intersecting by the time one reaches the undergraduate and graduate levels. But for the last two years, the University of Chicago has paved a […]
Alan Turing’s Underrated Biology
By Rob Mitchum Alan Turing is best known as the father of the modern computer, a skillful World War II codebreaker, and a pioneer in the study of artificial intelligence. But in the last years before Turing’s death at age 41, he aimed his genius at a different target: the then-stalled field of developmental biology. […]
When Computer Infections Help Science
Under normal circumstances, people want to keep infections away from their computers. But for Gary An, reconstructing nasty infections inside a computer is a research project, not an act of cyber-terrorism. In collaboration with laboratories at the University of Chicago Medicine studying infectious diseases, An is creating computer models that simulate the delicate, complex balance […]
Recalculating a 40-Year-Old Ecology Riddle
By Rob Mitchum In 1972, a physicist named Robert May tried his hand at a different scientific discipline, publishing a simple formula that inflamed the field of ecology. Scientists studying the structure of natural ecosystems had long assumed that diversity was an inherently good thing — those ecosystems stocked with thousands of species were likely […]
