Managing hardware and storage needs; building custom, in-house applications; making information accessible via the Web—such tasks are the mainstays of IT work, so mundane that they’re generally not worth talking about.
But science gives these routine tasks a fascinating twist. The hardware purchases support a compute cluster on the Caltech campus, while storage questions deal with the flood of data from genome sequencing. The in-house software reconstructs the text of ancient manuscripts. And the Web app helps people around the world follow our solar system and the hardware we’ve sent out to explore it.
For the people we’ve talked to, “working in IT” means working with some of the best minds on the planet on some of the hardest problems anywhere.
via ars technica
May 22, 2012
