What is happening on the hill?

TY - GEN

T1 - What is happening on the hill?

AU - Cox, Donna J.

AU - Smart, Larry

AU - Maizel, Jacob

AU - Hirsh, Rich

N1 - Funding Information: This panel provides important information on public policies affecting computer graphics research grants and helps prepare for future directions. Panelists present public policies having both beneficial and not-so-beneficial ramifications. For example, the "High Performance Computing Initiative," concerning tech-nology industrial incentives trends, the objectives and priorities of funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts, as well as trends in technology grants and incentives from the private sector. The primary goal of this panel is to increase SlGGRAPH awareness about decisions being made on Capitol Hill that directly affect future research funds. Funding Information: billion dollars. Projecting from past and present rates of expenditure, NIH-supported biomedical research at large will receive 100-150 billion dollars in the same period. Thus, it appears that if the funds are newly added for the project, or even if merely redirected, the financial impact on other research areas is relatively small. Considering the weekly reports of sequence data's contribution to knowledge of inherited diseases like cystic fibrosis or Huntington's disease or AIDS, and the rapid insights it provides, and the blow against the hopelessness that otherwise exists, it is not surprising that many citizens and scientists feel it is worthwhile. Anticipating the need for computing that would arise from such data I proposed in 1983 that the NCI should have a supercomputing facility, dedicated to biomedical problems and available to all basic researchers. That proposal was supported by Dr. Alan Rabson, Director of the NCI's Division of Cancer Biology, Diagnosis and Centers, by Deputy Director of the FCRF Dr. Peter Fischinger, and by the Director of the NCI (at that time Dr. Vincent DeVita, and now Dr. Samuel Broder). Approval was required along the entire NIH/HHS/PHS chain of command, as well, and was eventually given. It led to installation in 1986 of a medium-sized Cray XMP with front-end Vaxes and graphics workstations accessible on the Internet or by telephone. Time is allocated based on review for scientific merit and feasibility by peer groups of scientists. The operation is reviewed regularly by several bodies. Utilization was complete from themoment of availability. Recently an upgrade of the system was proposed,and evaluated by a group of prominent scientific computer users from across the US, who were convinced of the need and the suitability of the proposal. We are currently in the midst of an acquisition that will significantly increase the computing abilities of the biomedical community by nearly an order of magnitude over the present system, with enhanced graphics, networking and mass storage capability. Information on the system and its access is available from my office. The address is: Dr. Jacob V. Maizel, Jr. Chief, Laboratoryo f Mathematical Biology Building 469, Room 151 Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center Frederick, MD 21702-1201 Voice telephone: (301) 846-5532 Fax: (301) 846-5598 Internet email: [email protected] Several areas provide examples of computing and graphics in biomedical research. Drug design is becoming a computer graphic intensive area. It is often coupled with computational chemistry, which challenges even the most powerful computers. Realistic rendering and display are compute intensive as well. The choices of display style are very much an experimental area. Efficient balancing of the compute power with data transmission and graphics operations requires skilled attention from graphics specialists to provide systems that computer-indifferent/illiterate researchers find useful. Drug design covers a broad range of approaches. The traditional methods of trial and error testing that have yielded most of our drugs, though well tested, are known to cost on the order of 40 million dollars to find a possible, but not necessarily successful, candidate. Several modifications of this approach to utilize computers are in use. One way is to examine drugs already known to be active, with the goal of improving them. Computer graphics makes the transposition from chemical formula into 3-D space more reproducible and convenient than the drawings of the past. Another approach uses computation to make objective calculations of the electronic structures and reactivities of small drug molecules, thus increasing the precision and speed of chemical design and modification, and minimizing costly, unfruitful syntheses.

PY - 1990/8/6

Y1 - 1990/8/6

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85032590888&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85032590888&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1145/328750.328824

DO - 10.1145/328750.328824

M3 - Conference contribution

AN - SCOPUS:85032590888

T3 - ACM SIGGRAPH 1990 Panel Proceedings, SIGGRAPH 1990

SP - 1201

EP - 1215

BT - ACM SIGGRAPH 1990 Panel Proceedings, SIGGRAPH 1990

PB - Association for Computing Machinery

T2 - 1990 ACM SIGGRAPH Panel - 17th International ACM Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Technique, SIGGRAPH 1990

Y2 - 6 August 1990 through 10 August 1990

ER -