The Compute Impact project examines how industrial partners derive benefits from public datasets and computational technologies produced by European Research Infrastructure-Innovation Ecosystems (ERI-IE). Despite the recognized societal and scientific value of these technologies, their industrial impact remains underexplored.
This study focuses on the AlphaFold initiatives by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory – European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI). By evaluating case studies, the project aims to understand how ERIs like ATTRACT contribute to the industry beyond traditional economic metrics. Insights from this research will aid policymakers and stakeholders in assessing the broader impacts of computational infrastructures on innovation processes in the life sciences.
The project is coordinated by Esade Business School, in collaboration with the EMBL-EBI, the Warwick Business School and DeepMind, which has developed AlphaFold, an AI system that predicts a protein’s 3D structure from its amino acid sequence.
Get to know more about Compute Impact with this interview featuring Angelo Romasanta, Postdoctoral researcher at Esade.
What is your personal and career journey so far?
Before transitioning to the social sciences and studying how science impact can be maximized, I was a trained chemist. I was in the lab doing experiments, but then I always wondered like, how do these inventions, how do they impact society and businesses? And so, slowly I transitioned my way out of doing chemistry to doing more the science of science, and now I’m in Esade Business School, and it’s really exciting for me to look at how AlphaFold is transforming society.
What is the idea of the project?
Research Infrastructures here in Europe are known for producing some of the most cutting-edge science, and in their process of producing science, they create novel algorithms, and they create new databases wherein they can publish their results. But how do these databases and computational technologies impact society and businesses? This is what we are studying specifically, we are focusing on AlphaFold, which has been considered as one of the most important breakthroughs in science. It was created by Google DeepMind, and they decided to partner with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, in their partnership, DeepMind decided to publish the 200 million protein structures that they solved their algorithm and put it in this database. And so, we are trying to understand how this database is and how is this algorithm transforming the way life science research is being done.
Which partners are involved?
Esade Business School is the main investigator in this project, and we are partnering with three external partners to conduct this research. The first is with EMBL, which is hosting the AlphaFold database. Second is Warwick Business School to gives us more insights into innovation. And finally, we’ve been in talks more recently with DeepMind to understand how they are assessing also the impact of AlphaFold.
What can be the impact of Compute Impact on ATTRACT?
When policymakers look at the impact of research infrastructures, they normally focus on publications on patents or economic multipliers, so how many jobs are created by this. But by focusing on these metrics, they normally forget other outputs that these scientific infrastructures are able to produce. One would be these computational technologies that are also produced when they conduct science. Our project will try to have a more holistic picture of the impact of scientific infrastructures by taking into account the impact of these computational technologies.
How do you envision participating in this project will contribute to your personal and professional development?
This is the perfect opportunity for me because currently, I’m a postdoctoral researcher. For me to be a professor one day, I have to publish more, I have to create my network, and ATTRACT has provided me so many opportunities to further grow as an academic and to publish and share my knowledge.
For more information
Visit the Compute Impact project site.
The Compute Impact project examines how industrial partners derive benefits from public datasets and computational technologies produced by European Research Infrastructure-Innovation Ecosystems (ERI-IE). Despite the recognized societal and scientific value of these technologies, their industrial impact remains underexplored. This study focuses on the AlphaFold initiatives by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory – European Bioinformatics Institute […]
