Title: The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery 

Speaker: Dr. Tony Hey 
                 Vice President
                 Microsoft Research Connections
                 Microsoft Research

Date: 14 September 2012
Time: 11:00am – 12:30pm 
Venue: Lecture Theatre, William M. W. Mong Engineering Building, CUHK

Abstract:
There is broad recognition within the scientific community that the emerging data deluge will fundamentally alter disciplines in areas throughout academic research. A wide variety of scientists—biologists, chemists, physicists, astronomers, engineers – will require tools, technologies, and platforms that seamlessly integrate into standard scientific methodologies and processes. “The Fourth Paradigm” refers to the data management techniques and the computational systems needed to manipulate, visualize, and manage large amounts of scientific data. This talk will illustrate the challenges researchers will face, the opportunities these changes will afford, and the resulting implications for data-intensive researchers.

About the speaker:
As Vice President of Microsoft Research Connections, a division of Microsoft Research, Tony Hey is responsible for the worldwide external research and technical computing strategy across Microsoft Corporation. He leads the company's efforts to build long-term public-private partnerships with global scientific and engineering communities, spanning broad reach and in-depth engagements with academic and research institutions, related government agencies and industry partners. His responsibilities also include working with internal Microsoft groups to build future technologies and products that will transform computing for scientific and engineering research. Hey also oversees Microsoft Research's efforts to enhance the quality of higher education around the world.

Before joining Microsoft, Hey served as director of the U.K.'s e-Science Initiative, managing the government's efforts to provide scientists and researchers with access to key computing technologies. Before leading this initiative, Hey worked as Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science; and, Dean of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Southampton, where he helped build the department into one of the most respected computer science research institutions in England. His research interests focus on parallel programming for parallel systems built from mainstream commodity components. With Jack Dongarra, Rolf Hempel and David Walker, he wrote the first draft of a specification for a new message-passing standard called MPI. This initiated the process that led to the successful MPI standard of today.

Hey is a fellow of the U.K.'s Royal Academy of Engineering. He also has served on several national committees in the U.K., including committees of the U.K. Department of Trade and Industry and the Office of Science and Technology. He was a member of the British Computer Society, the Institute of Engineering and Technology, and the Institute of Physics. Tony Hey also has a passionate interest in communicating the excitement of science to young people. He has written 'popular' books on quantum mechanics and on relativity. Hey is a graduate of Oxford University, with both an undergraduate degree in physics and a doctorate in theoretical physics.