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BD2K2U2B

NIH recently announced a BD2K initiative. A number of new centers were funded.  I am honored to be included on the roster of one. Is it progress? Yes absolutely.  Is it the end point?  I don’t think so. In our COMPUTATIONAL BRIDGE TO EXPERIMENTS initiative we argued for a longer term view on Computational Thinking […]

Can conflicting opinions be both right ?

New York Times recently reported that John Paulson donated $400 million to endow Harvard Engineering School.  Many of us affiliated with science and engineering were rather thrilled about this generous charitable gesture and the promise it holds. However, the donation also received a critical response from many prominent people that suggested the money could have […]

Wisdom from the young generation: We fear “the new”

From BDC WIRE: “Emily Bruell, a valedictorian at Roaring Forks High School in Carbondale, Colorado, delivered a powerful message to her fellow graduates. Objectively, it was about labels. But the ultimate takeaway was the importance of courage.  She acknowledged the tendency we all have when faced with something new: “And the easiest thing to do when you are […]

Towards “Agile and Lean” Education: Learning about “Learning” from Bacteria

    “We Don’t See Things As They Are, We See Them As We Are” Rabbi Shemuel ben Nachmani, as quoted in the Talmudic tractate Berakhot (55b.) from quotation investigator… Putting this old wisdom together with some new wisdom in “Singularity is Near” should we rethink EDUCATION? In other words, knowledge and technology are growing at […]

Goodbye to “orgo” ? A new engineering based medical school…

  I just learned from Gene Robinson that University of Illinois is opening a new engineering based medical school. This is a novel and interesting development ! I recall as a faculty at Johns Hopkins many of our gifted engineering, physics or computer science undergrads struggled with orgo (Organic Chemistry).  It was the big barrier to […]

On scientists and boxers

I just ran into an article in Boston Globe on how John Quack enbush is planning to fight cancer by boxing. Anyway to fight cancer should be a good thing. What provoked me in this article is the quote: ‘I know a lot of people think I am crazy doing this. But I think what […]

On fashion…

“There always is a big difference between those who are fashionable and those who truly made a difference”. Zak Kohane.

For aspiring visionaries…

“You have to be a little clueless to be a real visionary”… Simon Kasif — but I don’t recall if I heard/saw this somewhere…

Nature and Imagination

15 years ago when I was getting immersed in computational genomics I had a conversation with my good friend David Lipman. I was observing that when I was working in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science many of us were highly motivated by the famous quote from Albert Einstein that “Imagination is more important than Knowledge”… […]