Scientists go back to school

While businesses sometimes hog centre stage in the computing world, now it's time for the men in white coats to have their say.

The 2020 Science Group - a think tank of 34 of the world's leading biologists, mathematicians, physicists and computer science academics - this week released a report detailing the findings of a three-day brainstorming session. Their conclusion? Computers are essential to the future of science.

Professor Ehud Shapiro of the Weizmann Institute of Science says: "We believe that computer science is destined to be at the heart of the life sciences in the same way that mathematics has been at the heart of the exact sciences. You can't be a good physicist without being a good mathematician. In the same way you won't be able to do front-line biology without computer science."

Computers are set to revolutionise and accurately predict the threat of pandemics, as well as look at what is happening to our planet's biosphere. Computer science is going to become as important as the other sciences.

The report, dubbed Towards 2020 Science, calls on government ministers and business and education leaders to focus on the next generation of scientists, who will need computational know-how to make rapid advances in areas such as climate change, fighting disease and stem-cell research.

Professor Andy Porter, director of the Cambridge eScience Centre, says: "When I take a PhD student on they are very good at solving problems on two sides of A4. But they will have no training or experience in data analysis or any of the things you need to make a single scientific point make sense.

"They need - not lessons on how to read email but on computational science. That sort of education doesn't exist. We have to build this sort of training in schools right through to university level."

The group says computers will advance in particular biology, where they will be used to solve not just algorithms, as they are today, but predictive modelling and machine learning - where computers learn human processes to speed up research.

One area that has been highlighted for future computer-aided work is research into diseases and drugs.

Professor Manuel Peitsch, global head of systems biology at the Novartis Institutes for biomedical research, says: "The problem that underlies drug discovery has to do with disease. You will see more and more computer-based approaches for discovering drugs. Over time it will use machine learning to address the predictive manner of these compounds."

Neil Ferguson, a professor of mathematical biology, already uses predictive programs to assess the threat of pandemics.

He says: "What might stop a pandemic at source are simulations which predict we might have a narrow window to intervene and stop disease. New diseases tend to come from animals. We want better early warning systems and that's about pattern recognition.

"We need formal ways of constructing models and computer science has a very important part to play."

But it's not just the public sector that is financing scientific and computer research. Microsoft Research Cambridge, a Microsoft-funded organisation linked to Cambridge University and other academic institutions throughout Europe, is giving a €2.5m R&D cash injection to the scientific community in a bid to examine some of the areas the 2020 Group highlighted.

Stephen Emmot, director of external research for the Microsoft institute and a member of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Science and Innovation Framework committee, says: "We're just beginning to see a glimpse of how we can predict natural systems.

"[Computers] are set to revolutionise and accurately predict the threat of pandemics, as well as look at what is happening to our planet's biosphere. Computer science is going to become as important as the other sciences."

More In Focus:

• Leader: The UK must invest in scientists