| Women Organizing the World Professional Accountability Network Sat, Jul 4th, @10:30am - 05:00PM |
| Business Networking Before Nine Tue, Jul 7th, @7:30am - 09:00AM |
| Business Networking Before Nine Tue, Jul 7th, @7:30am - 09:00AM |
| Corridor Informatics |
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By Steve Walker Informatics is a buzz word with many complex definitions. Just what is it? When you turn on your workstation or laptop, you are using informatics. When you send email half way around the world or search Google for an obscure fact, you are using it. When scientists aim a probe at a comet 120 million miles away or explore the human genome, they are using it. When analysts digest volumes of data and use visualization techniques to enable decision makers to get the big picture, that’s sophisticated informatics. When you turn on your workstation or laptop, you are using informatics. When you send email half way around the world or search Google for an obscure fact, you are using it. When scientists aim a probe at a comet 120 million miles away or explore the human genome, they are using it. When analysts digest volumes of data and use visualization techniques to enable decision makers to get the big picture, that’s sophisticated informatics. Data of all kinds is being created and collected at a pace like never before. How we find what we need to make informed decisions is informatics. And an amazing amount of it is happening right here in our own backyard. Before World War II, people did all their “computing” in their heads and on adding machines, as they built everything from the Pyramids to the Empire State Building. Computers were first developed during the war to crack German crypto codes. From the 1950s on, “mainframe” computers lived in specially air conditioned “ivory towers.” In the early 1980s, the age of personal computers quickly spread. The 1990s brought the Internet into widespread use, opening our eyes to vast new opportunities, and we’ve never looked back. And those of us in the Greater Baltimore-Washington area live in the midst of the most sophisticated informatics developments in the world. Our region has a greater concentration of federal laboratories and agencies, research universities and industry, all conducting a broader array of science on data of a more diverse nature, than anywhere in the world. And informatics has become the key technology in virtually every aspect of these efforts. Amazingly, informatics is our best kept secret, not because we are hiding it; we simply haven’t “connected the dots” to see that it is here. The profound impact of our region’s informatics efforts from medicine to intelligence, from agriculture to weather, from homeland security to the human genome, from the far reaches of outer space to nanotechnology, is a major scientific force. Most of these efforts grew from small individual initiatives, focused on specific limited objectives; many have become massive programs that may never end. The Informatics Coalition, which is an initiative of the Technology Leadership Consortium, is a group of volunteers from government, academia and industry whose goals are to make our region aware that informatics is one of our greatest strengths and to further enhance its significance through cooperative efforts in research, education and operational use. We are uncovering informatics “success stories” from astronomy to medicine to daily living which show the widespread impact of informatics and how work in one branch of science can be effectively used by other branches. We are working with educators and employers to ensure that we understand the needs of an Informatics workforce and can meet them – near term and in years to come. The most incredible aspects of informatics are evolving right here, right now, in our midst. Steve Walker is the chair of the Technology Leadership Consortium. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it |
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