Dr. Manfred Zorn 
Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Genomics
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab 


 Biocomputing and High Performance Computing 

Abstract 

Apart from isolated examples such as drug design and protein
crystallography, biology did not require the raw power of
supercomputers to move the field forward. Few life science companies
saw the need to purchase HPC systems. The recent concerted efforts to
sequence the human genome changed that.  Managing the large volume of
information, putting the pieces in the most probable order, let alone
making sense of the sequence require considerable computing
resources. With sequences of many other species still to follow,
biology gained an appetite for big machines and has become a driving
force for future HPC developments. The presentation will describe some
of the biocomputing problems and illustrate the complexities that
necessitate HPC solutions.



Manfred Zorn received his M.Sc. in Chemistry in 1986 and his D.Sc. in
Biochemistry in 1989 from the University of Vienna, Austria. Building
a bioinformatics application framework during his graduate years
started a mission to bring computational tools and technology to
biologists. In 1989 he joined the Genome Informatics group at the LBNL
Human Genome Center. At present he heads the Center for Bioinformatics
and Computational Genomics working on user interface frameworks, large
scale annotation of genomic sequences, integration of biological
information, and definition of object standards for life sciences.