Page 2,550«..1020..2,5492,5502,5512,552..2,5602,570..»

NOVO Health’s Independent Providers Take Advantage of New Cloud-Based Epic EHR Installation to Fuel Innovation and Better Patient Care – Business Wire

APPLETON, Wis.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Patients will have access to a wider range of high-quality physicians and health care providers thanks to a health records implementation launched by NOVO Health Technology Group, Focus Solutions and Medix Technology.

NOVO Health, through its subsidiary NOVO Health Technology Group, entered into an agreement with Epic to provide an integrated, comprehensive health record system to independent health care providers within the NOVO Health community. The agreement empowers independent health care providers with the quality EHR tools they need without compromising their independence.

To customize the implementation of this EHR offering for independent providers and maximize both the affordability and functionality of the offering, NOVO Health Technology Group partnered with Medix Technology and Focus Solutions. Together, they launched the full-stack, cloud-based installation of Epic using Microsoft Azure technology.

Accessibility and affordability are key pillars of the NOVO Health platform for both patients and providers, Curt Kubiak, CEO of NOVO Health. The Epic EHR and this hosting solution addresses both of those critical issues.

Focus Solutions embraced Azure-based cloud solutions to provide NOVO Health with enhanced data flexibility and accessibility through an optimized data network topology.

For providers who participate in NOVO Health programs, data benefits will provide critical fuel for quality care, engagement and patient experience initiatives in the months and years ahead. Providers are also better positioned to further leverage tools such as Microsoft Dynamics to improve patient experience, Microsoft Power BI for advanced healthcare analytics and sharper focus on quality initiatives through the scalability of Azure. The option provides an independent provider group with a unified data center strategy inclusive of all systems beyond their core Epic EHR.

This full-stack Epic implementation on Azure is a technology and health care industry innovation, bringing together best-of-class hardware, software and networking solutions.

"This challenging and collaborative project brought out the best in our team, Bruce Schaumberg, Founder of Focus Solutions, said. Having Medix (Technology) in our corner was invaluable. The best part, though, is coming together to help NOVO Health flourish and position themselves for future success and growth."

Access to critical health information via Epic will enable providers to effectively communicate with local health systems and will dramatically reduce the time it takes to see a patient, provide a proper diagnosis and treatment plan, and return that patient to health and lifestyle.

Executing such a full-stack strategy requires a top-notch team. To support the implementation of this cutting edge solution, talent partner Medix Technology recruited and prepared over two dozen people. This team included analysts and project leaders with Epic certification.

The project to launch NOVO Healths EHR Access Program kicked off September 2020, with the first install of its new Epic-powered solution completed in April 2021.

Medix Technology, a nationwide workforce solutions and consulting organization, brings their considerable experience with Epic implementations to ensure program success. Medix Technology will deliver project advisory services and pre-implementation planning.

"Our team was excited to bring our MedixDirect solution model and experience in project leadership to meet the needs of NOVO Health's unique build," said Eric Born, Vice President of Business Development at Medix Technology. "This partnership was about creating customized solutions for scalable growth."

Focus Solutions, a health care technology company and a Microsoft Cloud Solutions Provider (CSP) based in Green Bay, Wis., will be hosting Epic data for the independent practices.

Were really excited to be able to unlock this kind of connectivity for the independent provider, said Focus Solutions CTO Jason Lamine. Focus Solutions is strategically positioned to assist with data analytics and interoperability solutions and help NOVO Healths providers move the needle.

About NOVO Health

NOVO Health represents independent groups and accredited facilities offering specialty health care solutions and related services, connecting them with employers via the NOVO Health Market. Programs include bundled payments for health care, on-site and near-site clinic services, medical tourism and travel packages, subject matter consultants, electronic health record access and ASC development and expansion services. Novohealth.com

About Focus Solutions

Focus Solutions is a healthcare technology consultancy based in Green Bay, WI. Focus serves industry-leading healthcare organizations throughout the United States specializing in bringing practical EHR, clinical workflow, data analytics, and cloud hosting solutions to the one industry we serve health care. We are a proud Microsoft Cloud Solutions Provider (CSP), and our team features 27+ Certified Epic Analysts. To learn how Focus Solutions can help your organization, please visit http://www.focushcs.com.

About Medix Technology

As a part of the Medix family, Medix Technology provides expert IT and Epic consulting and staffing solutions. Headquartered in Chicago and with offices across the U.S., Medix Technology is not your typical staffing company. Our signature solution, MedixDirect, develops local talent for careers as Epic-certified professionals. Driven by our core purpose of positively impacting lives, we are different because we listen when others are selling. Discover the difference at http://www.medixteam.com.

Epic is a registered trademark of Epic Systems Corporation.

Continued here:
NOVO Health's Independent Providers Take Advantage of New Cloud-Based Epic EHR Installation to Fuel Innovation and Better Patient Care - Business Wire

Read More..

7 Major Website Outages That Wreaked OnlinHavoc This Past Year – Newsweek

Whether talking to your friends, doing assignments, watching television or keeping up with the news, we're basically online 24/7 nowadays, and sometimes you can forget how much you rely on the internet.

But we can be given a sharp shock when a website we depend on goes downnot least when you realise how many of your lifelines are connected to that one server.

The problems are exacerbated by service providers increasingly owning more and more of the internet, so that if one company suffers a problem, it can have a major knock-on effect for the internet as a whole.

Over the past year, there's been a number of website outages that have left us scrambling. Here are seven of the worst...

Being off Facebook for a few hours, especially if you connect with your friends through Messenger, can be a bit of a pain. But given that Facebook owns WhatsApp and Instagram, an outage at the social network can be catastrophic for communication.

That's exactly what happened on October 4, when a "faulty configuration change" prevented Facebook's 3.5 billion users from accessing its apps and products for nearly six hours.

Anybody using Facebook to log in to third-party apps was also blocked from these platforms. Twitter reportedly struggled to cope with the traffic as millions flocked to the app in lieu of other communication options.

This was even worse for Facebook because staff were using the same network to access the network remotely. Facebook Workplace, the internal communications platform used by its staff, was also down, while access cards used by staff to enter the offices were reportedly dependent on the internal systems working.

Facebook advertises where its servers are to the internet using the Border Gateway Protocol, but a "faulty configuration change" meant that it stopped telling routers where its data centres were, and it appeared to the routers that they didn't exist.

In a statement, it added: "We also have no evidence that user data was compromised as a result of this downtime."

We sometimes joke that a celebrity's actions can "break the internet" ...it turns out all you actually need is a failure at a content delivery network.

On June 8, some of the world's biggest news websites including CNN, the New Yotrk Times and CNN were taken down, as well as Amazon, Target, Twitch, Spotify, Pinterest, Hulu, Reddit and the U.K. government website, when cloud service provider Fastly suffered an outage.

Fastly, which improves load times for websites and operates a server network to prevent the effects of traffic overloads, suffered an outage due to a bad software update, saying it had identified a service configuration that triggered disruptions across its servers.

The outage lasted approximately an hour.

On November 25, 2020, Amazon Web Services, one of the world's most widely used cloud computing services, suffered an outage that wreaked havoc online.

News sites like The Washington Post, product providers like Adobe and workplace tools like Trello were knocked out due to the outage, which lasted a number of hours.

People also struggled to use Amazon owned products like Ring, Alexa and iRobot.

AWS later explained that the outage was caused by its attempts to add new servers to its network.

A massive computing network in Northern Virginia began to fail after AWS started to make "a relatively small addition of capacity" to the system just before 6 a.m. Eastern time, with the new capacity and an "operating system configuration" setting off a series of errors that caused an outage in the network of servers.

On December 14, 2020, many realised how much they depend on Google services when the company suffered a worldwide outage that lasted about 45 minutes.

While its search engine was fine, the outage affected Gmail, Google Calendar and YouTube, meaning those at work and those just chilling out were equally as affected. It also blocked those who logged in to third-party apps using Google sign-ins.

Perhaps even more bizarre is that some were left sitting in the dark and the cold as their Google Home apps and Nest services were left inoperable.

The issue was caused by a failure in the company's authentication tools, which manage how users log in to services run by both Google and third-party developers.

A Google spokesperson blamed "an internal storage quota issue."

Essentially, Google's internal tools failed to allocate enough storage space for services that handle authentication. The system should have automatically made more storage available, but it didn't which meant the system crashed.

Okay, so it was not quite within the last year, but it would be remiss not to include it.

On August 30, 2020, a control plane failure at the major global internet service provider (ISP) CenturyLink/Level 3 left it out of action for five hours.

The ISP is supposed to keep other sites up and running, but as it peers with providers and enterprises including Cloudflare, Google, the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, Discord, Hulu and OpenTable, this led to a huge worldwide outage being felt by millions of internet users across the United States and Europe.

Cloudflare said its outage was caused by a "third-party transit provider incident," and CenturyLink later explained there was an IP outage involving firewall and BGP (border gateway protocol, or the routing protocol for the internet) routing that impacted Content Delivery Networks (CDN).

In an in-depth analysis sent to customers, CenturyLink said that an improperly configured flowspec was part of an unsuccessful effort to block unwanted traffic on behalf of a customer.

The outage reportedly led to a 3.5 percent drop in global internet traffic, making it one of the biggest internet outages ever recorded.

Perhaps in another year, a work messaging system going down wouldn't have been that much of a big deal. But in 2021, when millions are working from home, it's a disaster.

On January 4, messaging service Slack suffered a major outage in the U.S., the U.K., Japan, India and Germany, on the first day back to work and school for millions,

The outage began about 10 a.m. ET and service was still sporadic two and a half hours later. There was tentative improvement until most issues were resolved about 3 p.m.

Slack pinned the source of the issue on network scaling issues by the AWS Transit Gateway, which didn't scale fast enough to accommodate the spike in demand for Slack's services as millions returned to work and school after the holidays.

A statement shared to customers read: "Around 6:00 a.m. PST we began to experience packet loss between servers caused by a routing problem between network boundaries on the network of our cloud provider."

On July 22, sites like Amazon, UPS, Airnbnb, the PlayStation Network, Steam and FedEx went down, all thanks to an outage with the Akamai Edge domain name system (DNS) service.

People trying to access these sites, plus others including American Express, Delta Airlines and Home Depot, were met with a DNS error message.

Akamai said the outage, which lasted about an hour, was caused by a bug triggered by a software update.

A statement read: "Upon rolling back the software configuration update, the services resumed normal operations. Akamai can confirm this was not a cyberattack against Akamai's platform."

The company said it would be reviewing its update processes in light of the issue.

Go here to read the rest:
7 Major Website Outages That Wreaked OnlinHavoc This Past Year - Newsweek

Read More..

Microsoft called out as big malware hoster thanks to OneDrive and Office 365 abuse – The Register

Updated Microsoft has been branded as "the world's best malware hoster for about a decade," thanks to abuse of the Office 365 and Live platform, as well as its slow response to reports by security researchers.

Infosec expert Kevin Beaumont, who worked at Microsoft as a senior threat intelligence analyst between June 2020 and April 2021, made the comments in response to a report by "cybersec professional" TheAnalyst.

TheAnalyst noted that a BazarLoader malware campaign was hosting its malware on Microsoft's OneDrive service. "Does Microsoft have any responsibility in this when they KNOWINGLY are hosting hundreds of files leading to this, now for over three days?" they asked.

BazarLoader is a family of malware where a spam email attempts to trick recipients into opening a trojan via a link, in this case to an ISO (disk image that can be mounted with one click) containing a malicious DLL with a misleading shortcut called Documents that runs it, leading in time to a potential ransomware attack using Conti.

"Amusingly, while at MS we built a pipeline to alert Google Drive about Bazarloader to have the links taken down, hence why it happened so quickly (literally minutes). Now they've moved to Microsoft infrastructure, who have the pipeline, but can't get Office to remove the files," said Beaumont.

Adding to the misery, "Microsoft's documentation specifically tells you to allowlist domains in question so security solutions don't inspect the content. Try defending a business with a situation like this," challenged Beaumont.

He added that "Microsoft cannot advertise themselves as the security leader with 8,000 security employees and trillions of signals if they cannot prevent their own Office365 platform being directly used to launch Conti ransomware. OneDrive abuse has been going on for years."

Average reaction time to malware reports: Microsoft is among the worst, and Google is also very poor

A site called URLhaus, maintained by Swiss project abuse.ch at the Bern University Institute for Cybersecurity and Engineering, keeps statistics on how long it takes for malware to be removed by the site which hosts it. The latest statistics show that Microsoft has the worst reaction time of any in the top ten sites hosting the most malware urls, at over 29 days.

According to the figures, Google hosts more malware and is also slow to remove it, but with a 14-day response time it is twice as quick as Microsoft.

Malware hosted on OneDrive, reported to URLhaus

The official Twitter account of abuse.ch, which runs URLhaus, said "for the record, the oldest active malware site with an age of 19 months is hosted on Sharepoint and serving GuLoader." It added: "I've seen an increase of 10 new malware sites hosted at MS over the weekend. Whatever they do with these reports filled out through the MSRC API, it is definitely not automated." MSRC is the Microsoft Security Response Center.

Beaumont said that while "My experience is the Azure Storage items should disappear very quickly ... unfortunately Office is in a mess"

The Microsoft sites hosting malware use OneDrive accounts that might have been created specifically for the purpose, or hijacked from legitimate users. It is also common to see malware hosted on business Office 365 accounts that have been compromised.

Automated blocking of suspicious files by the cloud providers is problematic not only because new variants are hard to detect, but also for privacy reasons. Even if malware is detected by Microsoft Defender, it is not "automatically taken down in OneDrive," Beaumont said.

The reaction time measures how long it takes to remove malicious content following a specific report, and is an average time to remove the malware; the full list shows that some reports take just two days and others up to 4 months.

The message for users is that seeing a link is hosted on a familiar name like OneDrive or Google Drive is not a reason to have confidence that it is safe to open - and that allow-listing those domains is a mistake.

We have asked Microsoft for comment.

A Microsoft spokesperson said: "Abuse of cloud storage is an industry-wide issue and we're constantly working to reduce the use of Microsoft services to cause harm. We are investigating further improvements to prevent and rapidly respond to the types of abuse listed in this report." They added: "We continue to encourage customers to practice good computing habits online, including exercising caution when clicking on links to web pages, opening unknown files, or accepting file transfers, and we also encourage customers to report abuse using this form [link]."

Read this article:
Microsoft called out as big malware hoster thanks to OneDrive and Office 365 abuse - The Register

Read More..

Buildings, Safety Engineering, and Environmental Department Special Land Use Hearing: 18017 East Warren Avenue – City of Detroit

NOTICE OF HEARINGPLEASE NOTE OUR MEETINGS ARE TEMPORARILY ON ZOOM

Governor Gretchen Whitmers Stay Home, Stay Safe Executive Order 2020-21 (EO 2020-21) went into effect on March 24, 2020. Consistent with the various executive orders from Governor Whitmer, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the City of Detroit Buildings, Safety Engineering and Environmental Department, Special Land Use Hearings will be meeting remotely via the internet until further notice. This action is being taken in accordance with Governor Whitmers Executive Order 2020-75, which provides temporary authorization of remote participation in public meetings and hearings.

The Detroit Buildings, Safety Engineering and Environmental Department, Special Land Use Hearings will be held electronically, in compliance with the Open Meetings Act and EO 2020-75

TO OWNERS AND RESIDENTS OF PROPERTY WITHIN 300 FEET OF:

You are hereby notified that a hearing will be held at 9AM on Wednesday, November 3, 2021

The link below is for all of our Zoom Meetings: https://cityofdetroit.zoom.us/j/91380692722

Dial in number: 1-267-831-0333

APPLICANT: Timothy Flintoff Architect, PLLC Timothy Flintoff

LOCATION: 18017 E. Warren, 5027 Radnor, & 5000 Farmbrook between Radnor and Farmbrook Streets

DESCRIPTION OF PROPERTY: Long legal description available upon request (PIN 21003037-45, 21078438, & 21077997)

PROPOSED USE: Establish an Employee Recruitment Center in an existing 13,600 square foot building in a B4TMSO (General Business in a Traditional Main Street Overlay) Zoning

District and develop a 19-space Accessory Parking Lot on existing vacant land in an R1 (Single-Family Residential) Zoning District.

PROCESSED PER SECTIONS 50-3-241, 50-8-22(1), 50-9-112(11), and 50-12-299 OF THE OFFICIAL ZONING ORDINANCE Chapter 50.

Any citizens, owner or resident of property (or his/her duly authorized representative) may express his/her comments, statements, or opinions concerning the proposed land use either in writing to the Department, by email at [emailprotected] or by virtually at this hearing.

NOTICE TO HANDICAPPED PERSONS

BSEED Hearings are accessible to the handicapped. Any handicapped person needing special assistance (other than transportation) in order to participate in this hearing must notify the Department of such need at least forty-eight hours prior to the hearing. Michigan Relay is a communications system that allows hearing persons and deaf, hard of hearing, or speech impaired persons to communicate by telephone. Users may reach Michigan Relay by dialing 7-1-1 and then connecting with the Zoom conference number above. There is no additional charge to use this service. Please contact 313-590-1922 with any requests for accommodations.

Continue reading here:

Buildings, Safety Engineering, and Environmental Department Special Land Use Hearing: 18017 East Warren Avenue - City of Detroit

Read More..

OSU’s College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology announces 2021 Hall of Fame inductees and Lohmann Medal recipients – Oklahoma State…

Monday, October 18, 2021

Media Contact: Jeff Hopper | Marketing Media Specialist | 405-744-2745 | jeff.hopper@okstate.edu

The College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology (CEAT) at Oklahoma State University has announced the 2021 Hall of Fame inductees and Lohmann Medal recipients.

CEAT Hall of Fame nominees must be a distinguished engineer, architect or technologist who has made an outstanding contribution to their profession or OSU and has served their community, state and nation with distinction. They should represent some of the most distinguished alumni and industry leaders associated with CEAT. The following candidates meet and exceed all criteria for the hall of fame recognition.

The Melvin R. Lohmann Medal was established in 1991 to honor alumni of CEAT for contributions to the profession or education of engineers, architects or technologists that merits the highest recognition. These honorees are also inducted into the CEAT Hall of Fame.

Dr. Christine Altendorf grew up in Oklahoma City, started at OSU in the fall of 1981, and later graduated with her Bachelor of Science in agricultural engineering in 1985, and her Master of Science in the same subject in 1987. After her masters degree, Altendorf started a full-time staff position with the School of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering (BAE) as a research engineer and decided to work on her doctoral degree on the side.

After receiving her doctorate, Altendorf realized she had a passion for applied engineering and started her federal government career in the Hydrology and Hydraulics Branch of the Tulsa District Corps of Engineers in April 1994. She became a professional engineer in Civil Engineering that same year.

Altendorf currently serves as the chief of engineering and construction for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in Washington, D.C. In this role, she oversees a workforce of more than 9,000 engineers and technicians, and a portfolio of civil and military projects totaling over $60 billion. She interacts extensively with top leaders within the Department of Defense and other government agencies, as well as those working in the private sector of engineering and construction. She makes regular appearances on Capitol Hill and communicates frequently with various professional and advocacy groups. She has worked for the Army for over 27 years, 21 of which were with the Corps.

Altendorf became a member of the prestigious Senior Executive Service (SES) in 2009. The SES is all about executive leadership; these individuals serve just below presidential appointees and represent a key link between political appointees and civil service employees. Only about 0.35 percent of the federal workforce achieves SES status. At about the same time she assumed her current position, Altendorf was recognized with the Distinguished Executive Presidential Rank Award. This is the highest annual award for career SES members and recognizes sustained extraordinary accomplishment. No more than one percent of the career SES corps can receive the Distinguished Executive Presidential Rank Award each year.

Altendorf has had assignments across the globe including: Kansas City; San Francisco; Dallas; Washington, D.C.; Hawaii; Iraq and Afghanistan. Her career has some truly remarkable signature accomplishments that merit additional mention. The Folsom Dam project, which she inherited when she was new to the Sacramento District, had significant constructability and cost issues with pressure from Congress and headquarters to solve the problem. She worked with the Bureau of Reclamation, USACE, and Congress to turn the project around and get the $1 billion Folsom Joint Federal Project authorized and constructed.

She led Task Force Restore Iraqi Oil (TF-RIO) in 2004, working to get oil flowing from northern Iraq to the south to allow for economic stability and nation building for the country. In 2011, she led the Joint Program Integration Office in Kabul, Afghanistan, focused on building electrical grid systems, roadways, dams, and infrastructure for the Afghan Army and police.

Because of her program management and communication skills, she was asked to be the first Director of the Armys Sexual Harassment and Assault Response and Prevention (SHARP) Program, which was outside of her normal realm of assignments. Responding to Congress, the White House, and both the Secretaries of Defense and the Army, she developed a significant number of initiatives and successfully launched this critical program.

While Altendorf was Director of the Army Installation Management Command Pacific (another non-USACE assignment), she was involved with the Korea Transformation program involving $10 billion of infrastructure that was constructed and accepted at Camp Humphreys for the relocation of 25,000 soldiers and family members to the new installation.

Altendorf explains the importance of getting an engineering degree, being an engineer allows you so many opportunities and that is the true value of the degree. You can choose to stay in design or construction engineering, or research where you turn ideas into practical solutions. You can move to management and focus on inspiring and leading people, projects and programs. But the basis of all of this is that through our engineering degrees, we were taught to think, assume, imagine and ultimately solve hard problems and create an innovative future.

Dr. Leland Blank graduated from OSU with his Master of Science in 1968 and his doctoral degree in 1970. Since leaving the School of Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM) at OSU, Blank has built a stellar career spanning multiple universities around the globe.

Some of Blanks biggest accomplishments include being a leader in international higher education development, and co-author of two current and leading engineering textbooks in engineering economy. Both textbooks are published by McGraw Hill, with the first textbook on its eighth edition, and the second textbook on its third edition. He has served as the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) President, as well as interim provost, chief academic officer and dean of engineering at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, the principal investigator (PI) or co-PI of multiple educational and research projects. Blank was a distinguished military graduate from ROTC and a recipient of the Army commendation medal.

Blank has also received IISEs pinnacle award, the Frank and Lillian Gilbreth award in 2018. The Gilbreth award is the highest and most esteemed honor in the field of industrial engineering, which recognizes those who have distinguished themselves through contributions to the welfare of mankind in the field. He was awarded the IISE Wellington Award for long-term contributions to the field of engineering economy, as well.

Blank has provided leadership at several levels at Texas A&M University: department head; assistant dean; and assistant provost for continuous improvement. Within the Texas A&M University system, his leadership includes several directorships and the key role of assistant deputy chancellor for planning. His industrial experience includes employment with Southwestern Bell Telephone, Public Service Board of San Antonio, and General Telephone Company (now Verizon).

Blank is also the author of over 100 publications textbooks, journal articles, conference proceedings and keynote papers. His professional focus has been engineering economics, statistics, decision support, strategic planning and managing complex systems. Though the number of his publications is noteworthy, it is not the volume of Blanks work that makes him an exceptional contributor to Industrial and Systems Engineering, but rather his impact. Blank has always been forward thinking and his publications reflect his ability to challenge the status quo and move the finish line.

Blank continues to serve professionally through his membership on the Board of Trustees of St. Marys University in San Antonio, where he received his bachelors degree. Additionally, he is a board member and treasurer of The Cowboy Academy of the IEM Department at OSU.

Regarding advice to current and future CEAT students, Blank advises, become involved in some sort of mentoring program through your academic department or an organization in which you are a member or officer. Listening to and asking questions of several professionals currently in practice, who received an education and degree similar to your own, can be very useful as you decide on dimensions regarding your own career path.

Carrie Johnson graduated from OSU in 1987 with a bachelor's degree in architectural engineering, as well as her Master of Architectural Engineering degree in 1988. She now serves as a principal of Wallace Engineering Structural Consultants, Inc., (now Wallace Design Collective) a national structural engineering, civil engineering and landscape architecture firm headquartered in Tulsa with offices in Oklahoma City, Kansas City, Denver and Atlanta. She is a licensed engineer in 43 states. Johnson currently serves as the chair of the Board of Directors for Wallace Design Collective.

Johnson is a past president of the National Council of Structural Engineers Associations (NCSEA), a non-profit organization formed to constantly improve the standard level of practice of the structural engineering profession. She has also served on a number of NCSEA committees. In 2016, Johnson was given the NCSEA Service Award. This award is presented to an individual who has worked for the betterment of the organization to a degree that is beyond the norm of volunteerism. It is given to someone who has made a clear and indisputable contribution to the organization and to the profession.

Johnson is an active member of the Oklahoma Structural Engineers Association (OSEA), served as president of OSEA in 2001 and 2009, and was the OSEA delegate to NCSEA for six years. She has also served numerous times as a juror for the OSU School of Architectures senior design projects; as an advisor for the School of Civil Engineerings senior level steel course; and has been a mentor for high school students interested in engineering programs housed in CEAT.

Johnson served as president of the Board of Directors of the Applied Technology Council (ATC) in 2019, a nonprofit corporation whose mission is to develop and promote state-of-the-art, user-friendly engineering resources and applications for use in mitigating the effects of natural and other hazards to the built environment. ATC's publications on disaster recovery and assessment are used throughout the world. She also serves as chair of ATC's strategic planning committee and is still on the board of directors today.

Johnsons project work is concentrated in the retail industry where she has been instrumental in the development of multi-sited building prototypes. She has automated many in-house operational and administrative functions and, more importantly, has developed proprietary software programs to automate repetitive structural engineering tasks for clients building programs. She has led the companys efforts to create the best experience possible for their clients and employees, called One Wallace. This has been a multi-year effort to provide training tools for employees, consistency between offices, and drawing and engineering standards.

My most vivid memories are of long nights in the architecture building, Johnson said as she reflected on her time at OSU. I am privileged to work with many of the people I met at OSU and a lot of our clients are people who we all met during our time in college.

Dr. Matt Perry is an OSU alumnus with three degrees in Electrical Engineering. He last graduated from OSU with his doctorate in 1991, where he focused on signal processing, system theory and mathematics.

Perry has over 35 years of industry and academic experience, spanning three different areas: first in defense, then semiconductors and finally hyperscale hardware and software systems. He is currently the general manager of silicon and hardware systems for Microsofts Azure Hardware Division, where he is developing next generation data center silicon/hardware solutions with emphasis on artificial intelligence, computation and intelligent edge.

Perry has had an impact on many dimensions of the field. He was an accomplished researcher, and published papers in signal processing, both working as an engineer and as an educator. Those skills served him well as he became an engineering product leader at Motorola, developing and shipping video conferencing chipsets. In this role, he developed hardware neural networks, an experience which would serve him well later in his career.

With his communication expertise from his time as a professor, his talent as a researcher, and his design capabilities as an engineer, Perry already had a powerful combination of skills. When he moved to Advanced Micro Devices in 1995, he supplemented all those capabilities with a move into corporate strategy. Perry managed AMD's strategy with respect to Intel along with their technical and intellectual property strategies.

After AMD, Perry moved into a business entrepreneur role, serving as the CEO of three different startup companies (Transmeta, RPO, and Montalvo). Transmeta had been a darling of Silicon Valley with their ambition of revolutionizing microprocessor architecture, but the competition proved too challenging, causing them to fall on hard times. Perry was brought in to chart a new course, which he did by shifting Transmeta to an IP licensing company. That move proved successful and Transmeta was able to license large portions of their portfolio for nine figures of revenue. At RPO, he led successful technology development and financing rounds. He then led Montavlo to be one of the only companies successfully developing x86 microprocessors outside of Intel and AMD, and successfully sold the company to Sun Microsystems.

After the Sun Microsystems acquisition, Perry moved into the role of corporate executive, overseeing strategic partnerships, IP licensing, and strategic plans for multiple server designs. In 2014, he moved to Microsoft, where he took on an even broader role than at Sun, overseeing hardware partnerships and hardware-software codesign for the Windows business. He was extremely successful in this executive role, and the Windows 10 hardware ecosystem is now incredibly healthy, with a compelling product mix of third party and first party devices, as well as a strong product roadmap.

Perry commends his professors and the CEAT staff for providing him with the support he needed to graduate with his undergraduate, masters, and doctoral degrees at OSU.

One of my proudest moments at OSU is when I completed my doctoral defense, Perry said. I will never forget standing in front of my major professor, Dr. Rao Yarlagadda, as he extended his hand to shake and said, Congratulations Dr. Perry, you have passed,' after years of work and research. I would not have been able to do it without the help of the Cowboy family.

Perry reflects on his time at OSU, and his biggest advice to young CEAT students is, one of the most important lessons I learned from OSU is to branch out and try things outside of your comfort zone. Without doing this, it is more challenging to grow and become the person you want to be. You may find a new passion or hobby, but going outside of your comfort zone and learning new things will open doors that you never knew were available.

Stan Stephenson graduated from OSU in 2003 with a Master of Science in Engineering and Technology Management (ETM). He is a registered professional engineer and certified reliability engineer. Stephenson has been with Halliburton since 1979 and is now a chief technical advisor for the company.

Stephenson immediately leveraged his ETM education at OSU to win the 2003 CEO for a Day Competition with a written entry on how to make Halliburton a better, stronger, more profitable company. Following this, he developed a reliability program modeled after the U.S. Armys Ultra-Reliability Program. He managed this program for several years before taking a role to optimize both the capital efficiency and operating efficiency of the Production Enhancement surface equipment.

Stephenson has 64 patented inventions, which vary drastically from one application to another. One invention uses artificial neural networks and genetic algorithms to maximize regional oil production. This production prediction and optimization system was highlighted in the Advanced Well Construction Technology Flagship in the 2000 Halliburton Annual report. This technology was awarded the Harts Oil and Gas World magazines Best New Technology for the Mid-Continent Area.

Stephenson was also one of a small team that brought Halliburtons automated stimulation fleet into a reality in the 1980s. A few years later, the fleet became the first in the industry to be controlled remotely through satellite connection.

Stephenson did not limit himself to mechanical, electromechanical, software/firmware or reliability systems. In the area of chemical mixing, he identified and modeled the time, temperature and mechanical shear dependency of guar hydration. This was critical to the functioning of Halliburtons gelling systems.

Stephensons expertise has been recognized by both his peers and management within Halliburton. He was voted by his peers as a senior member of the technical staff and was selected by management as one of the charter members of the Strategic Competitive Intelligence Network. He currently reviews about 8,000 patents a year for opportunities for or threats to Halliburtons technologies.

Stephensons latest activities involve the creation of methods to accurately predict equipment life and operating costs. He created equivalency-based models that contain lifecycle performances of all primary components of the equipment, enabling a very complicated reliability analysis system currently in use in Halliburton. His methods allow Halliburton to maximize the use of their complex high horsepower systems while minimizing failure costs. His depth of knowledge of this technology and other technologies made him the go-to individual in the company and in the industry. He has been an invited speaker/consultant on many technologies he developed.

Stephenson gives CEAT students advice when going through their collegiate years, good judgement comes from bad experiences. You have the authority to do anything for which you are willing to accept the consequences. Understand the half-life of your engineering discipline and plan for your continuing education accordingly. Most importantly, follow your passion so you wont work a day in your life.

The College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology would like to congratulate all of its 2021 Hall of Fame inductees and Lohmann Medal recipients.

Story By: Kaitlyn Mires | kamires@okstate.edu

Read more:

OSU's College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology announces 2021 Hall of Fame inductees and Lohmann Medal recipients - Oklahoma State...

Read More..

College of Engineering and Science to honor past distinguished alumni – News at Louisiana Tech

The Louisiana Tech University College of Engineering and Science (COES) will honor its 2020 Distinguished Alumni on Friday, Oct. 22, with a Deans Reception.

During the Deans Reception, Dr. Hisham Hegab, COES Dean, will recognize distinguished alumni who did not receive an in-person ceremony because of COVID-19. The event is open to these distinguished alumni and their families, the Engineering and Science Foundation Board, and COES program chairs.

These alumni have shown commitment to their fields, the University, and the College, and I am proud to have the opportunity to celebrate their achievements, Hegab said. Each of these alumni serves as an example for our students. Their distinguished careers and accomplishments highlight what someone with skill, perseverance, and a Louisiana Tech engineering and science education can accomplish.

The following alumni will be honored at the ceremony.

Faculty select Distinguished Alumni from past graduates within their programs each year.

The Engineering and Science Foundation Board supports the activities and programs of the College, serves as an advisory committee to the Dean, secures funds to meet the Colleges needs, and coordinates efforts with the University Foundation.

Visit link:

College of Engineering and Science to honor past distinguished alumni - News at Louisiana Tech

Read More..

SJSU Joins CSU Initiative to Increase Women Faculty in Engineering | SJSU Newsroom – SJSU Today

Sheryl Ehrman, dean of the College of Engineering, speaks at San Jos States Silicon Valley Women in Engineering conference in 2019. The university has joined a CSU-wide initiative to increase women faculty in engineering.

More than 30% of tenure or tenure-track faculty at San Jos State Universitys Charles W. Davidson College of Engineering are women the fourth highest among public engineering colleges in the country, according to the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).

Thanks to a $1.25 million National Science Foundation grant, that number may grow, with an emphasis on increasing diversity as well as expanding networking and support opportunities for women faculty.

Awarded to California State University, Fresno who is partnering with SJSU, California State University Los Angeles and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo the grant will support those California State University (CSU) campuses efforts to hire more women engineering faculty members, especially underrepresented minority women, according to a release from Fresno State.

Ultimately, the goal is to enroll more female students. Up to 11 more CSU campuses may eventually join the initiative.

We are excited to participate in this initiative, said Sheryl Ehrman, the Don Beall Dean of the College of Engineering.

While we are one of the top public colleges of engineering in the nation with respect to women tenure/tenure-track faculty, there is still room for progress, she continued. I appreciate the focus on strengthening research collaborations and building the mentoring and peer-support network.

The initiative, called the Kindling Inter-University Networks for Diverse (KIND) Engineering Faculty Advancement, is led by Fresno State and will follow a three-pronged approach.

First, it will analyze the campuses engineering faculty data using Aspires Institutional Change program to evaluate hiring practices, and policies and procedures around supporting and advancing existing faculty.

Second, it will create a CSU-wide network for research collaboration, including mini-grants for network members. And third, it will foster a systemwide mentoring and peer-support network to increase faculty retention and promotion.

The initiative will also create a dashboard where campuses can track the demographics of existing faculty and advancement data, which would allow them to identify potential roadblocks in hiring and retention.

Is it at the hiring state where we arent getting diverse candidates? Is it in faculty departures before tenure? Is there a gender difference there? asked Kimberly Stillmaker, assistant professor of civil engineering at Fresno State and one of the faculty members who led the grant application process.

Once we have that data, then well be able to make better changes, more pinpointed changes, she noted.

In 2019, only 17% of the countrys engineering tenured/tenure-track faculty were women, according to the ASEE, and its even lower for Black and Latina women.

Since Ehrman stepped into her role in 2017, she has worked to increase the presence of female faculty in SJSUs College of Engineering.

The SJSU campus has made significant changes to our faculty search processes, including training committees in inclusive search practices, she noted.

Our college has women in leadership roles department chairs, associate deans and me as the second female dean so this helps in recruiting women at all career stages, Ehrman continued. We are looking for faculty who are student-focused and who will prioritize delivering a quality educational experience for students as well as research that directly involves students.

Young Park, associate professor of computer engineering, is one of those faculty members. She uplifts women and underrepresented minorities through cybersecurity hands-on research and industry experience.

My focus is to let these students overcome stereotypes as they develop skills that are needed for advanced cybersecurity, she explained.

I believe diversity is a key factor for successful programs at any organization and any project, because the complete solution can be derived from various backgrounds and environments. Through the KIND project, I hope our female faculty members will become leaders in the engineering field.

Another strategy that has helped recruit women engineers to SJSU is the colleges emphasis on applied research that benefits society, Ehrman said.

Women are more drawn to engineering if they see an engineering career as a way they can contribute positively to society, and being an engineering professional, training the next generation of engineers is a way to scale that benefit, Ehrman explained.

The College of Engineering provides several opportunities for women engineering students to build relationships with mentors and each other. For example, the college hosts an annual Silicon Valley Women in Engineering Conference, where female engineering students from SJSU and other higher ed institutions can learn from women professionals in the field.

SJSU women engineering students can also join SWE SJSU, the campuss chapter of the Society of Women Engineers. And in 2017, an engineering sorority was founded on campus as well.

Still, Ehrman emphasized that the KIND Engineering Faculty Advancement initiative will allow SJSU to continue to take big steps toward bringing more women especially underrepresented minority women into the engineering field.

The grant will provide excellent opportunities for networking and support of women faculty across the CSU, so our current and future faculty will greatly benefit, she said.

While our percentages are high, our college can improve in recruitment and retention of women faculty of color, and we hope to be able to learn through participation in this grant how we can improve in this area.

Learn more about the KIND Engineering Faculty Advancement initiative.

Read the rest here:

SJSU Joins CSU Initiative to Increase Women Faculty in Engineering | SJSU Newsroom - SJSU Today

Read More..

These organizations are helping young women see themselves in engineering careers – The Globe and Mail

Photographer Heike Delmore documents Kushboo Patel in action at Valiant Machine and Tool in Windsor, Ont., as part of a photo campaign to show women working in STEM and the trades.

Rob Gurdebeke

Dora Strelkova has always been interested in how things work. Her dad, who she describes as a jack-of-all-trades, often built things in his home workshop and taught her how to use tools such as a power saw. But when Ms. Strelkova joined her schools robotics team in Grade 9, she felt intimidated as one of only three girls on a team of 15.

I went to the first meeting and they were using all these technical terms and terminologies and tools, Ms. Strelkova says. They were working on their robot already. I had no idea what they were doing. I was so intimidated. I stopped going to meetings.

A few months later, at a job fair held at her Windsor, Ont., high school, Ms. Strelkova won a raffle prize to attend a week-long summer camp through the Windsor-based non-profit Build a Dream. The camp was meant for young girls to learn more about skilled trades.

Story continues below advertisement

I was introduced to an electrician and we wired a home circuit with a switch and a lightbulb, Ms. Strelkova recalls. The camp piqued Strelkovas interest in hands-on activities. In Grade 10, she rejoined the robotics team and went on to become a team leader in Grade 12. Now, shes in her fourth year studying electrical engineering at the University of Windsor.

I think a lot of girls still grow up thinking that STEM-related or engineering fields arent meant for women, which is a completely false narrative that we need to rewrite, she says.

Exposure to career pathways is an important factor in helping young women see engineering as a viable option, says Nour Hachem-Fawaz, president and founder of Build a Dream. This national non-profit organization, founded in 2014 and backed by industry sponsors including EllisDon, Enbridge, Spark Power, Valiant TMS and Magna International, was created to advance diversity and inclusion initiatives and encourage female students to explore careers where women are under-represented.

In Canada, engineering is one industry where women lag far behind in representation. According to national organization Engineers Canada, women made up only 14.2 per cent of total national membership in 2020.

Dora Strelkova, an electrical engineering student at the University of Windsor, uses a 3D printer as part of a photo shoot for Build a Dream at Valiant Machine and Tool.

Rob Gurdebeke

For many Build a Dream events, Ms. Hachem-Fawaz says her team engages both parents and their daughters to learn about career paths in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and the trades. They educate parents about the high demand for STEM and trades professionals and the prospects for financial gain through these career paths. When speaking to students, the approach changes, she says.

[Young women] often say I want to help people, she explains. We highlight how career pathways in STEM and skilled trades help build, create and design communities.

For example, they might explain how civil engineers design hospitals to ensure they are safe and accessible for the public.

Story continues below advertisement

When you position it that way, an aha moment happens and theyre like, Okay, now I can see how thats going to make an impact.

At the University of Alberta, Ania Ulrich, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and the facultys first female department chair, helped develop Fem+, a seven-month mentorship program for high school students of under-represented genders.

Whats been key about this program is it uses the model of near-peer mentorship, Ms. Ulrich says. As opposed to somebody middle-aged, like me, going into the classroom, we get undergraduate female engineering students who are currently in the program to pair up one-to-one with these students.

Ms. Ulrich says the group focuses on building relationships and creating meaningful connections rather than hosting competitions, which can be a very male-centric way of approaching things. Program participants have gone on field trips to the observatory, learned about a group building wildfire-identifying satellites and talked with engineering professors and working professionals.

The effectiveness of Fem+ was clear after its first cohort of 30 students completed the program in 2018, says Ms. Ulrich. (Theyve since expanded to 60 high school students.)

In our first year, 89 per cent of the [high school] students [who participated] came to our engineering program, she says. The remainder went to other STEM programs, like the sciences or computer science. Weve had really high success.

Story continues below advertisement

While Build a Dream and Fem+ focus on high school-aged students, others in the industry are introducing careers in STEM to girls at an even younger age. For example, Komal Singh, a Google engineering program manager based in Waterloo, Ont., has written two childrens books: Ara the Star Engineer and Ara the Dream Innovator, to get more young girls interested in STEM. Since first being published in 2018, Ara the Star Engineer has been translated into ten languages.

Industry and societal stereotypes also play a role in how young women and their parents view careers in the trades and STEM, Ms. Hachem-Fawaz says. Thats why Build A Dream hosted a series of photo shoots with women at job sites this past summer and fall.

We were struggling to find stock images of women in the industry that werent staged or filled with makeup, she says. As opposed to showing them carrying a tool bag, why dont we show them working with those tools in action?

The photos capture women working in construction, automotive engineering, manufacturing, millwork and more. The images from the shoots are available to the public and Ms. Hachem-Fawaz hopes that companies, industry magazines and publications will make use of them.

The more young women see themselves reflected in these kinds of images, the more likely they will be to dream about a future in STEM and the trades, she says.

Its about a societal shift, she says.

Story continues below advertisement

Interested in more perspectives about women in the workplace? Find all stories on the hub here, and subscribe to the new Women and Work newsletter here. Have feedback on the series? Email us at GWC@globeandmail.com.

Excerpt from:

These organizations are helping young women see themselves in engineering careers - The Globe and Mail

Read More..

CareAcademy Adds New Leadership in Sales and Engineering to Fuel Rapid Growth – Business Wire

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CareAcademy, the leading home care and home health workforce empowerment platform, today announced the addition of two vice presidents to its leadership team overseeing engineering and sales.

As Vice President of Engineering, Shira Haddad will lead the engineering department and all related operations and activities. Prior to CareAcademy, Haddad led the engineering team at Kyruus, a provider of search, scheduling and data management solutions for healthcare organizations. Before Kyruus, she led the engineering department in Veson Nautical, a provider of commercial maritime software. Haddad brings more than 15 years experience in various software companies, serving in different management roles and specializing in leading scale, change and team empowerment. She earned her bachelors degree in mathematics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

With nearly two decades of sales and business development experience in healthcare technology and payments, Jeff Herd joins as Vice President of Sales where he will focus on expanding its high-growth team and infrastructure to continue the rapid scaling of CareAcademys customer base. Prior to joining CareAcademy, Herd held sales leadership roles with Verifone, Zynx Health, Equinox Payments and Jacobus Consulting. He holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Arizona State University and a bachelors degree from the University of Iowa.

We are delighted to welcome Shira and Jeff to CareAcademy to help guide our engineering and sales teams, respectively, and to further accelerate this next phase of our growth strategy, said Helen Adeosun, founder and CEO of CareAcademy. Training is proving itself as a true health intervention as care moves rapidly into home and community-based settings. Jeff and Shira will play an instrumental role as we transform how quality home care is delivered, fueled by data and insights. Their combined experience and expertise scaling companies comes at a time when CareAcademy is experiencing tremendous growth and opportunity. We are excited to have them on board.

These additions continue the companys strong momentum. Earlier this year, CareAcademy announced the formation of its inaugural Advisory Board to partner with the company on key industry issues and provide support as CareAcademy endeavors to train one million new direct care workers by 2023. CareAcademy then announced the appointment of Robyn Lunsford as Senior Vice President of Operations to build out the companys strategic operations and research foundation. More recently, CareAcademy was ranked as an Inc. 5000 company, a recognition of America's fastest-growing private companies.

For more information about CareAcademys leadership team, please visit:https://careacademy.com/about-us/#our-team

About CareAcademy

CareAcademy creates online training that empowers senior care professionals to deliver the highest caliber of service and improve the lives of older adults. More than 200,000 direct care workers are learning and growing professionally through CareAcademy. Coupled with its advanced reporting, training, and compliance management dashboard, CareAcademy is an end-to-end, scalable training solution that transforms home care businesses into efficient industry leaders. To learn more, visit https://careacademy.com.

Visit link:

CareAcademy Adds New Leadership in Sales and Engineering to Fuel Rapid Growth - Business Wire

Read More..

A.I. Predicts the Shapes of Molecules to Come – The New …

For some years now John McGeehan, a biologist and the director of the Center for Enzyme Innovation in Portsmouth, England, has been searching for a molecule that could break down the 150 million tons of soda bottles and other plastic waste strewn across the globe.

Working with researchers on both sides of the Atlantic, he has found a few good options. But his task is that of the most demanding locksmith: to pinpoint the chemical compounds that on their own will twist and fold into the microscopic shape that can fit perfectly into the molecules of a plastic bottle and split them apart, like a key opening a door.

Determining the exact chemical contents of any given enzyme is a fairly simple challenge these days. But identifying its three-dimensional shape can involve years of biochemical experimentation. So last fall, after reading that an artificial intelligence lab in London called DeepMind had built a system that automatically predicts the shapes of enzymes and other proteins, Dr. McGeehan asked the lab if it could help with his project.

Toward the end of one workweek, he sent DeepMind a list of seven enzymes. The following Monday, the lab returned shapes for all seven. This moved us a year ahead of where we were, if not two, Dr. McGeehan said.

Now, any biochemist can speed their work in much the same way. On Thursday, DeepMind released the predicted shapes of more than 350,000 proteins the microscopic mechanisms that drive the behavior of bacteria, viruses, the human body and all other living things. This new database includes the three-dimensional structures for all proteins expressed by the human genome, as well as those for proteins that appear in 20 other organisms, including the mouse, the fruit fly and the E. coli bacterium.

This vast and detailed biological map which provides roughly 250,000 shapes that were previously unknown may accelerate the ability to understand diseases, develop new medicines and repurpose existing drugs. It may also lead to new kinds of biological tools, like an enzyme that efficiently breaks down plastic bottles and converts them into materials that are easily reused and recycled.

This can take you ahead in time influence the way you are thinking about problems and help solve them faster, said Gira Bhabha, an assistant professor in the department of cell biology at New York University. Whether you study neuroscience or immunology whatever your field of biology this can be useful.

This new knowledge is its own sort of key: If scientists can determine the shape of a protein, they can determine how other molecules will bind to it. This might reveal, say, how bacteria resist antibiotics and how to counter that resistance. Bacteria resist antibiotics by expressing certain proteins; if scientists were able to identify the shapes of these proteins, they could develop new antibiotics or new medicines that suppress them.

In the past, pinpointing the shape of a protein required months, years or even decades of trial-and-error experiments involving X-rays, microscopes and other tools on the lab bench. But DeepMind can significantly shrink the timeline with its A.I. technology, known as AlphaFold.

When Dr. McGeehan sent DeepMind his list of seven enzymes, he told the lab that he had already identified shapes for two of them, but he did not say which two. This was a way of testing how well the system worked; AlphaFold passed the test, correctly predicting both shapes.

It was even more remarkable, Dr. McGeehan said, that the predictions arrived within days. He later learned that AlphaFold had in fact completed the task in just a few hours.

AlphaFold predicts protein structures using what is called a neural network, a mathematical system that can learn tasks by analyzing vast amounts of data in this case, thousands of known proteins and their physical shapes and extrapolating into the unknown.

This is the same technology that identifies the commands you bark into your smartphone, recognizes faces in the photos you post to Facebook and that translates one language into another on Google Translate and other services. But many experts believe AlphaFold is one of the technologys most powerful applications.

It shows that A.I. can do useful things amid the complexity of the real world, said Jack Clark, one of the authors of the A.I. Index, an effort to track the progress of artificial intelligence technology across the globe.

As Dr. McGeehan discovered, it can be remarkably accurate. AlphaFold can predict the shape of a protein with an accuracy that rivals physical experiments about 63 percent of the time, according to independent benchmark tests that compare its predictions to known protein structures. Most experts had assumed that a technology this powerful was still years away.

I thought it would take another 10 years, said Randy Read, a professor at the University of Cambridge. This was a complete change.

But the systems accuracy does vary, so some of the predictions in DeepMinds database will be less useful than others. Each prediction in the database comes with a confidence score indicating how accurate it is likely to be. DeepMind researchers estimate that the system provides a good prediction about 95 percent of the time.

As a result, the system cannot completely replace physical experiments. It is used alongside work on the lab bench, helping scientists determine which experiments they should run and filling the gaps when experiments are unsuccessful. Using AlphaFold, researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder recently helped identify a protein structure they had struggled to identify for more than a decade.

The developers of DeepMind have opted to freely share its database of protein structures rather than sell access, with the hope of spurring progress across the biological sciences. We are interested in maximum impact, said Demis Hassabis, chief executive and co-founder of DeepMind, which is owned by the same parent company as Google but operates more like a research lab than a commercial business.

Some scientists have compared DeepMinds new database to the Human Genome Project. Completed in 2003, the Human Genome Project provided a map of all human genes. Now, DeepMind has provided a map of the roughly 20,000 proteins expressed by the human genome another step toward understanding how our bodies work and how we can respond when things go wrong.

The hope is also that the technology will continue to evolve. A lab at the University of Washington has built a similar system called RoseTTAFold, and like DeepMind, it has openly shared the computer code that drives its system. Anyone can use the technology, and anyone can work to improve it.

Even before DeepMind began openly sharing its technology and data, AlphaFold was feeding a wide range of projects. University of Colorado researchers are using the technology to understand how bacteria like E. coli and salmonella develop a resistance to antibiotics, and to develop ways of combating this resistance. At the University of California, San Francisco, researchers have used the tool to improve their understanding of the coronavirus.

The coronavirus wreaks havoc on the body through 26 different proteins. With help from AlphaFold, the researchers have improved their understanding of one key protein and are hoping the technology can help increase their understanding of the other 25.

If this comes too late to have an impact on the current pandemic, it could help in preparing for the next one. A better understanding of these proteins will help us not only target this virus but other viruses, said Kliment Verba, one of the researchers in San Francisco.

The possibilities are myriad. After DeepMind gave Dr. McGeehan shapes for seven enzymes that could potentially rid the world of plastic waste, he sent the lab a list of 93 more. Theyre working on these now, he said.

Continued here:
A.I. Predicts the Shapes of Molecules to Come - The New ...

Read More..