Transcript A New Way Forward

A New Way Forward
Duane R. Valz
IGC Inaugural Conference
August 10, 2007
IGC – Creating the conditions for true
breakthroughs in cosmology and unification
• Interdisciplinary Focus
– Multiple fields within physics + math
– Theorists + experimentalists
• Theory must inevitably be validated by
empirical data and practical
applications
• On the verge of a major paradigm shift!
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Science, Technology & Intellectual Property
• The primary mechanisms of scientific
advancement are research, collaboration,
publication and peer review
• Secondary mechanisms are technological
application and commercialization, as well
as popularization through appeals to public
imagination
• IP, such as patents, capture the practical
application of basic ideas and put them into
an economic framework – “indicia of
innovation”
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Yahoo! Research
• 7 locations around the U.S. and the World
• Over 100 researchers and former academics
• Areas of focus:
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Search
Machine Learning
Microeconomics
Media Experience Research
Community Systems
• Basic research for its own sake, as well as for
practical application to defined problems
• Collaborations with dozens of Universities
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Search Technology + Physics
• The PageRank algorithm
was developed by Brin &
Page (see U.S. Patents
Nos. 6.295,999; 6,799,176
& 7,058,628)
• It is based on a Markov
chain in which the states
are Web pages
• What are some other
possibilities for applying
advanced analytical
techniques in physics to
solving next generation
problems in Search,
Machine Learning, Security
and Artificial Intelligence?
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Additional Areas of Interest
• Signal processing
• Networking
• Data storage
• Data mining
• Power consumption
• Quantum computing
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Interesting Prospects
• Through the Internet human motivations, communities and
interactions are increasingly amenable to scientific research
– What can advanced research in physics tell us about humanmachine evolution in data intensive, large scale networks?
– Put another way, how can evolving inter-networked information
systems be better understood using the increasingly
sophisticated models applied to understanding physical
systems?
– Are there ways to leverage IGC research results for such
peripheral applications without detracting from primary mission
of basic physics research and advancing pure knowledge?
• How many measures of innovation should the IGC pursue?
– Adjunct research collaborations outside (but leveraging) core
areas of research focus?
– Patent goals (alongside publication goals)?
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