arms to the scientific and computer science community.

[cOntinUeD FrOM P. 112]
it’s also a great testament to what can
happen when scientists and computer
scientists collaborate.

So SciScope enables you to combine
the two data sets.

You can add your own data and do new research. It’s an example of what I call “scientific mashups,” and it is, I think, increasingly how much research will be done in some fields. It’s a little like Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of the Semantic Web, but in a scientific context.

Astronomy is another field that has
benefited from computer science.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey changed everything, because it generated a high-resolution survey of 25% of the night sky. So, instead of an astronomer getting time on a telescope to look at a particular star system, going back to the university, analyzing the data, and publishing the results with one or two grad students, you’ve now got data on more than 300 million celestial objects available to study. In this case, the data is published before any detailed analysis has been done.

Gray was instrumental in building on-
line databases to house the Sloan Digi-
tal Sky Survey data.

Jim and Alex Szalay also thought they could apply the same sort of infrastructure to a sensor network, so we built a sensor network in the grounds of Johns Hopkins University to investigate soil science. The exciting thing

“We are now seeing
the emergence
of a fourth paradigm
for scientific
research, namely
data-intensive
science.”

is that a similar sensor network is now being deployed in Latin America, in the Atlantic rainforest near São Paulo.

what have these projects taught you
about fostering meaningful collabora-
tion between the scientific and com-
puter science communities?

I’ve come to the conclusion that you cannot force scientists to adopt a technology no matter how useful you think it would be for them! You have to get as close to their way of working as possible and give them an immediate win. You can’t say, “Go climb this cliff, and at the top there’s a reward.” So you need to form a partnership where there’s an early win for the scientist and a win for you in that they’re using at least some of your great research technology, suitably packaged to be usable by scientists.

what sort of reception has The Fourth
Paradigm received?

It’s been very complimentary, which is gratifying, and there’s been a huge explosion on Twitter and in the blogo-sphere. We’re working on ideas for a follow-up, and I’m working with the National Science Foundation’s Advisory Committee on Cyberinfrastructure on a data task force. It would be premature to say we know exactly what people need, since that’s what the scientific community has to tell us. We haven’t got there yet, and that’s one of the reasons why it’s a very exciting time in science and computer science.

 

Leah hoffmann is a brooklyn, ny-based technology writer.