Current Activities

In preparation for my second book, Planting the Seeds: How the NIH Cultivated Computing, I am focusing on the role of the National Institutes of Health in promoting the development of computer technology in the 1960s. Specifically, I am investigating the NIH’s Advisory Committee on Computers in Research (ACCR) during its tenure as the primary sponsor, and arguably the primary shaper, of American biomedical computing in the early-to-mid 1960s. Generously supported by a US Senate trying to boost US science vis-à-vis the USSR, the ACCR fostered the development of several major biomedical computing centers (at MIT, UCLA, and Washington University, among others) as well as exemplary computer systems, most notably the Laboratory Instrument Computer (LINC), a predecessor to the personal computer, and the Dendritic Algorithm (DENDRAL), an early expert system. For all of its influence, however, the ACCR’s goals and workings remain opaque. By directly examining NIH archival collections, private collections, artifacts (e.g. computers and analog-to-digital conversion equipment), and interviewing surviving participants I aim to elucidate the precise priorities of the ACCR and place those priorities into the context of the NIH’s transformation into a major center and sponsor of research during the 1960s.

During the 2007-2008 academic year I will pursue this research at the NIH, where I will be the DeWitt Stetten, Jr. Memorial Fellow in the History of Biomedical Sciences and Technology. My fellowship will be sponsored by the NIH’s Center for Information Technology.

I am also an active participant in the University of South Carolina’s ^nanoSTS group. There I am examining the common origins, both in terms of broad goals and experimental agendas, of biomedical computing and nanotechnology.