De Shaws Supercomputer

Image: Photograph courtesy of D.E. Shaw Research

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Secretive and publicity shy, David E. Shaw made billions of dollars using fantastically complex computer algorithms to trade on Wall Street.

Now this former computer scientist at Columbia University turned tycoon is about to finish the most powerful supercomputer in history. Not to make a killing on the stock market, but to solve some of the trickiest problems in biology: How the molecules that comprise "life" function and interact at the most basic level.

It may seem like a James Bond movie: mysterious billionaire-genius designs megacomputer to probe life's secrets. Will he perhaps tinker with them, too, in a nefarious scheme to dominate the world by creating enhanced life forms or bio-silicon superbeings?

There's no sign that Shaw is going super-villain. Nor does he need to, considering the practical and potentially profitable uses for his megacomputer.

Knowing more about the complex interactions inside us could lead to better and more efficacious drugs, and to develop computer models that can simulate what happens even at the atomic level of life. It could lead to new ideas for developing computers and other machines based on cells and molecules.

Shaw's device, which he's named "Anton" in homage to pioneering microbiologist Anton van Leeuwenhoek, might also take humans several steps closer to having a schematic of how life works at its most elemental levels.

Several years ago, Shaw stepped down from the day-to-day management of his derivatives firm, D.E. Shaw and Company—which in June 2008 was managing upwards of $39 billion in investments.

He became chief scientist of his own computer laboratory, D.E. Shaw Research, home of the team making Anton.

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