Singapore, 3 March 2011 – 30 scientific experts representing
Asia, the Americas, and Europe convened at the Institute for
Infocomm Research (I²R), a research institute of the Agency
for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), for a workshop
co-organized with the US Board on Global Science and Technology
(BGST). Held at Fusionopolis@One North from 28 February to 3 March
2011, the workshop was on "Realizing the Value from Big Data.
BGST is a new venture set up by the US National Academies to study
and recommend how US science and technology can leverage a global
network of scientists to promote greater collaboration across
international borders. BGST is coordinating an international
program of workshops, and is also developing a global community to
build collaboration across borders to look at common issues that
need to be addressed collectively.
The intention is to continue with experts' meetings in different
international locations, to engage workshop participants to build
and continue relationships and use the website to create an ongoing
international dialogue.
This workshop in Singapore is the second of such workshops
organized by BGST. Some participants from the Singapore meeting
will form part of a core group that will help to plan and attend
subsequent meetings.
Prof Lye Kin Mun, Executive Director, I²R commented: “It
was a tremendous opportunity to co-organize, with the Board on
Global Science and Technology of the US National Academies, this
workshop in Asia for the very first time. Big Data represents a new
paradigm in scientific discovery and we are very excited by the
important new ideas arising from the discussions amongst these
international multidisciplinary scientific experts. I²R will
be studying, very deeply, how these new ideas may be pursued for
potential economic impact to Singapore. We look forward to other
opportunities of working closely with BGST.”
'Big data' refers to the tools, processes and procedures allowing
an organization to create, manipulate, and manage very large data
sets and related storage facilities. This could mean terabytes,
petabytes or even larger collections of data. The rapid increase in
computational power, coupled with a steady expansion in memory
capacity, over the past few decades emphasize the opportunities
available in the exploration and exploitation of big data. While
diverse fields such as astrophysics and bioinformatics have made
incredible progress in exploitation of big data, significant
barriers that are both technological and cultural remain - and many
of those barriers span both scientific disciplines and application
domains. Thus, the central goal of this workshop series was to
identify and prioritize common barriers that require collaborative
solutions, and to create a roadmap to facilitate resolution.
This workshop in Singapore brought together bioinformatics
scientists and environmental scientists with computational/data
scientists to assess and project the impact of complex datasets
around the themes of Volume, Variety, Velocity, and Veracity.
About 50 participants, comprising 30 scientific experts from Asia,
the Americas, and Europe, plus BGST members and senior I²R
researchers participated in this workshop. The workshop was led by
the BGST Chair Dr. Ruth David, CEO and President of Analytic
Services Inc. Other BGST Board members in Singapore include Dr.
Jeffrey Bradshaw of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine
Cognition; Dr. Dianne Chong of Boeing; Dr. Peter Kolchinksy of RA
Capital; and Dr. Bernard Meyerson of IBM (who serves also on I2R's
Scientific Advisory Board).
BGST Chair, Dr. Ruth David said, “Full realization of the
potential value of Big Data will require solutions that span
disciplinary boundaries and extend across geographic borders. The
goal of BGST is to foster an international collaboration to
accelerate development and sharing of such solutions, thus enabling
the work of individual researchers around the world as we
collectively tackle major global challenges.”
Prominent experts at the workshop include Dr. Paul P. Maglio of IBM
Research, Dr. Yong Ge of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Dr.
Keiko Takahashi of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and
Technology. (See Annex A for profiles of these experts) One
Singapore expert participating in the workshop is Dr. Frank
Eisenhaber, Executive Director of A*STAR's Bioinformatics Institute
(BII).
*** END ***
For media enquiries, please contact:
Mr Andrew Yap
Manager, S3 Corporate Communications
SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING INSTITUTES (SCEI)
DID: (65) 6419 1143 Fax: (65) 6466 7716
Email: yapjt(at)scei.a-star.edu.sg
_________________________________________________________________
About the Board on Global Science and Technology
The Board on Global Science and Technology (BGST) was established
in 2009 to build a global community of interest among scientists,
engineers, medical and health researchers, and entrepreneurs who
are engaged in the research and development of emerging
technologies. The purpose of this global network is to enhance
transparency with regard to international scientific and
technological advances, to identify impediments to technological
development and application that require collaborative resolution,
and to foster the development of international norms for the
governance of emerging technologies. BGST is coordinating an
international program of workshops, and is also developing a global
community by means of a professional networking website that
rapidly disseminates information resulting from the workshops, and
sustains interactive engagement within the scientific and technical
communities.
The opportunities and challenges of “data-intensive”
science is the organizing theme for BGSTs international and
US-based workshops in 2010-2011. The first workshop, co-sponsored
with Microsoft, took place in August 2010. Participants discussed
data challenges associated with the development of the Smart Energy
Grid.
BGST is sponsored by Defense Research & Engineering (within the
Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense/DoD). BGST is a joint
project of the Policy and Global Affairs Division and the Division
on Engineering and Physical Sciences (DEPS) of the National
Research Council, the operating arm of the U.S. National Academy of
Sciences.
BGST Board Members
Ruth David, Ph.D. (Chair)
President and Chief Executive Officer
Analytic Services, Inc.
Jeffrey Bradshaw, Ph.D
Senior Research Scientist
Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition
Jared Cohon, Ph.D.
President
Carnegie Mellon University
Dianne Chong, Ph.D.
Director, Materials and Process Technology
The Boeing Company
Eric C. Haseltine, Ph.D.
President and Marketing Director
Haseltine Partners, LLC
John Hennessy, Ph.D.
President
Stanford University
Nan M. Jokerst, Ph.D.
J.A. Jones Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer
Engineering
Duke University
Peter Kolchinsky, Ph.D.
Managing Director
RA Capital Management, LLC
Bernard Meyerson, Ph.D.
VP for Strategic Alliances and CTO
IBM, Systems and Technology Group
Neela Patel, Ph.D.
Director, External Research, Global Pharmaceutical R&D
Abbott Laboratories
Dan Reed, Ph.D.
Corporate Vice President, Technology Strategy and Policy (TS&P)
and Extreme Computing Group (XCG)
Microsoft
About Institute for Infocomm Research
The Institute for Infocomm Research (I²R - pronounced as
i-squared-r) is a member of the Agency for Science, Technology and
Research (A*STAR) family. Established in 2002, our mission is to be
the globally preferred source of innovations in `Interactive
Secured Information, Content and Services Anytime Anywhere' through
research by passionate people dedicated to Singapores economic
success.
I²R performs R&D in information, communications and media
(ICM) to develop holistic solutions across the ICM value chain. Our
research capabilities are in information technology and science,
wireless and optical communications, and interactive digital
media.
We seek to be the infocomm and media value creator that keeps
Singapore ahead. Website: www.i2r.a-star.edu.sg
About the Agency for Science, Technology and Research
(A*STAR)
The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) is the
lead agency for fostering world-class scientific research and
talent for a vibrant knowledge-based and innovation-driven
Singapore. A*STAR oversees 14 biomedical sciences, and physical
sciences and engineering research institutes, and nine consortia
& centre, which are located in Biopolis and Fusionopolis, as
well as their immediate vicinity.
A*STAR supports Singapore's key economic clusters by providing
intellectual, human and industrial capital to its partners in
industry. It also supports extramural research in the universities,
hospitals, research centres, and with other local and international
partners.
For more information about A*STAR, please visit
www.a-star.edu.sg
ANNEX A
1. Paul P. Maglio is a research scientist and manager at the IBM
Research - Almaden in San Jose, California. He is currently working
on a system to compose loosely coupled heterogeneous models and
simulations to inform health and health policy decisions. Since
joining IBM Research, he has worked on programmable Web
intermediaries, attentive user interfaces, multimodal
human-computer interaction, human aspects of autonomic computing,
and service science. He holds thirteen patents and has published
more than 90 scientific papers in various areas of computer
science, cognitive science, and service science. He is also editor
of the recently published Handbook of Service Science. He holds a
bachelor's degree in computer science and engineering from MIT and
a Ph.D. in cognitive science from the University of California at
San Diego, and he is currently an Associate Adjunct Professor at UC
Merced, where he teaches cognitive science and service
science.
2. Yong Ge received the B.Eng. degree in surveying and mapping and
the M.Eng. degree in geographical information system from Wuhan
University, Wuhan, China, in 1995 and 1998, respectively, and the
Ph.D. degree in cartography and geographical information system
from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, in 2001. She
is an Associate Professor with the State Key Laboratory of
Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of
Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese
Academy of Sciences. Her research activity focuses on spatial data
analysis and data quality assessment. She has published over 40
scientific papers in refereed journals. She is a member of the
Model and Method Division, Geographical Information Society in
China.
3. Keiko Takahashi is Group Leader, Earth Simulator Center, Japan
Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology. She obtained her
B.S in Complex Function Theory at the Department of Mathematics of
Tsuda College in 1985; Master of System Science in 1987 and her
Ph.D. in System Science in 1991, both from the Interdisciplinary
Graduate School of Science and Technology at Tokyo Institute of
Technology. Her research activities include Computational Fluid
Dynamics, Formal Method Theory, Concurrent/Parallel Computational
Algorithms, Complexity Theory, Parallel Computing Architecture,
Genetic Algorithms, Complexity Theory Oceanic Modeling, Atmosphere
Modeling, Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Modeling, High Performance
Computing Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere-Sea Ice Modeling, High
Performance Computing Multi-scale multi-physics simulations of
weather/climate. |
