Innovation is Elegance. Complex Explanations are Not.

Apr 17, 2018

World of Pure Imagination

On the Rise of Materials Informatics

We have enjoyed a century of innovation and productivity since Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company developed the moving assembly line manufacturing process over the years of 1908 to 1915. While originally proposed by…

William L. Weaver in TL;DR Innovation

Apr 17, 2018

A Run on the Bank

Crowdsourcing Open Source Software for Biobanking

In the fall of 2008, software developers Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky launched an online forum encouraging programmers to post questions that were answered by fellow visitors to the site. Called Stack Overflow, it was not…

William L. Weaver in TL;DR Innovation

Apr 17, 2018

Thinking in Pictures

General-purpose Computing on Graphics Processing Units

In the mid-1970s filmmaker George Lucas sought to capture his vision for a space opera called The Star Wars on motion picture film. The difficulty was that the technology did not yet exist to create the vast…

William L. Weaver in TL;DR Innovation

Apr 17, 2018

One Step at a Time

Innovations in Next Generation Genome Sequencing

In 1898, Samuel P. Langley received a $70,000 grant from the United States War Department and the Smithsonian Institution to develop a piloted airplane. Langley invented a series of successful unmanned powered aircraft…

William L. Weaver in TL;DR Innovation

Apr 17, 2018

Managing into Mastering

The Rise of Master Data Integration

Among the many benefits of teaching in the School of Arts & Sciences is the opportunity to observe the many interactions between these two academic traditions. Systems theory describes an artistic ability as being able to…

William L. Weaver in TL;DR Innovation

Apr 17, 2018

Drinking from the Fire Hose

Storage Algorithms for Genomic Data

Early 20th century economist Thorstein Veblen is attributed with the quip “Invention is the Mother of Necessity.” More than a witty reversal of the original idiom, Veblen’s observation is a recognition of the circle of…

William L. Weaver in TL;DR Innovation

Apr 3, 2018

Can’t Touch This

Wireless Power Transmission

A few years ago, a colleague and I enjoined a group of undergraduates on an old-fashioned field trip to the Edison National Historic Site in West Orange, NJ. We took the public tour and visited the storied laboratories that witnessed the…

William L. Weaver in TL;DR Innovation

Apr 3, 2018

On the Pulse

Pen-based Computing in the Laboratory

During the summer of 2001, our nascent department was preparing to welcome its first class of students back to their sophomore year. After a freshman year that saw courses in basic electronics, computing, solution chemistry, biology and…

William L. Weaver in TL;DR Innovation

Mar 31, 2018

Algorithmic Intelligence

Very Real Advances in the Hierarchical Temporal Memory Platform

I had the great pleasure of dinning with Dr. John McCarthy, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Stanford University, when he received the 2003 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and…

William L. Weaver in TL;DR Innovation

Mar 31, 2018

World on a String

Toward Experimental Support for String Theory

A while back, learned philosophers plied their trade by mixing various combinations of the four primary elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Around the same time, healers knew that discomfort was brought about by bad…

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TL;DR Innovation

Innovation is Elegance. Complex Explanations are Not. Innovation reduces system complexity. This publication seeks to reduce confusion.

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