Scientific Writing
-
In silico: Part 1
Growing up, the traditional view I had of a scientist was that of an individual wearing a lab coat, goggles, and gloves, either holding a test tube over a Bunsen burner or growing cells on a Petri dish Jurassic Park-style. As I have moved from high school to undergrad to graduate school, my perspective has certainly changed quite a bit, especially as I have been involved in more computational projects. Suddenly, I have found myself amongst scientists intent on understanding organism growth who never actually look away from their computer screens during the entire workday (except for a little stretch, lunch or coffee of course!). What is the place of in silico experiments in biological fields? In this series, I present several examples where real-life problems (in the biological fields or adjacent to those) can be tackled with the help of computers. These will not necessarily be directly related to my work but I hope they inspire you as much as they have inspired me!
-
Unfolding the protein folding problem
I was first exposed to a major problem in a scientific field in my third year of undergraduate studies. My friends and I sat entranced in a lecture hall on the first floor of the Bahen Centre as we learned about the P versus NP problem. This problem requires its very own blog post, but basically, the main question of this problem is whether a certain class of hard computational problems can be solved in a “reasonable” amount of time. At the time, some part of me used to imagine students and professors frantically scribbling away their ideas, drafting accidental new papers on their way to solving the enigma, and definitely drinking jug after jug of coffee. The very next semester, I learned about the protein folding problem, an instance of a very hard problem in biology. As an idealistic undergraduate student, I used to imagine that someday, someone would solve the P versus NP problem and that this would be the key towards solving the protein folding problem. Little did I know that it would be advances in machine learning that would change everything!
-
The Augmented Doctor
When I think of doctors, I will admit that one of the first images that comes to my mind is that of Dr Gregory House. No, not really in terms of bedside manner, but more in terms of his problem-solving skills. For a long time, he impressed me with his dedication, even at the eleventh hour. He could easily find connections between previous cases, go through a patient’s history quickly but also meticulously, tirelessly keep on looking for any abnormalities…Well, Dr House is not a real person. I am not a doctor myself but I can imagine that productively going through a similar kind of problem-solving process day after day (at the beginning of a shift, at the end of long hours) must require an incredible amount of energy, skill and dedication. All while time is of the essence. Hats off to doctors, nurses and all other medical staff. Truly.