As part of the Severo Ochoa Research Seminar series, Tony Hey gave a talk titled “The Fourth Paradigm - Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery and Open Science" today.
As part of the Severo Ochoa Research Seminar series, Tony Hey gave a talk titled “The Fourth Paradigm - Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery and Open Science" today.
Hey began with an overview of the changing scientific paradigms over its history which started with theoretical science, progressed to include to experimental science, went on to include computational science and now incorporates data intensive science, the fourth paradigm, and the topic of his presentation. He went through some examples to illustrate the increasing importance of this model: a genomics and personalised medicine project using Wellcome trust data, NSF’s ocean observatory initiative which is part of the transformation of ocean science using data from sensors and satellites, and the CEDA Centre for Environmental Data Analysis Jasmine infrastructure (of which the BSC’s Earth Sciences department is an intensive user). He also discussed networking and so called super-facilities. He then highlighted the move towards open access to the results of publicly funded research including both papers and data, and the importance of all researchers having ORCID IDs and making their publications available on open access repositories. Hey also discussed research reproducibility which is often an area which is not properly addressed in computer and computational science. The talk ended with Jim Gray’s diagram of the vision of all scientific data being online.
Note: For all open access issues, including obtaining an ORCID ID, BSC researchers can contact Isabel Garcia isabel [dot] garcia [at] bsc [dot] es
Biography: Tony Hey began his career as a theoretical physicist with a doctorate in particle physics from the University of Oxford in the UK. After a career in physics that included research positions at Caltech and CERN, and a professorship at the University of Southampton in England, he became interested in parallel computing and moved into computer science. In the 1980’s he was one of the pioneers of distributed memory message-passing computing and co-wrote the first draft of the successful MPI message-passing standard.
After being both Head of Department and Dean of Engineering at Southampton, Tony Hey escaped to lead the U.K.’s ground-breaking ‘eScience’ initiative in 2001. He recognized the importance of Big Data for science and wrote one of the first papers on the ‘Data Deluge’ in 2003. He joined Microsoft in 2005 as a Vice President and was responsible for Microsoft’s global university research engagements. He worked with Jim Gray and his multidisciplinary eScience research group and edited a tribute to Jim called ‘The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery.’ Hey left Microsoft in 2014 and spent a year as a Senior Data Science Fellow at the eScience Institute at the University of Washington. He returned to the UK in November 2015 and is now Chief Data Scientist at the Science and Technology Facilities Council.
In 1987 Tony Hey was asked by Caltech Nobel physicist Richard Feynman to write up his ‘Lectures on Computation’. This covered such unconventional topics as the thermodynamics of computing as well as an outline for a quantum computer. Feynman’s introduction to the workings of a computer in terms of the actions of a ‘dumb file clerk’ was the inspiration for Tony Hey’s attempt to write ‘The Computing Universe’, a popular book about computer science. Tony Hey is a fellow of the AAAS and of the UK's Royal Academy of Engineering. In 2005, he was awarded a CBE by Prince Charles for his ‘services to science.’
