Gary Stiehr
Research Accomplishments & Interests
Gary Stiehr, M.S., joined The Genome Institute at Washington University in 2006 and currently oversees the Information Systems group, which encompasses the System Administration, Database Administration, Web, User Support and Operations groups. In that role, he and his team strive to provide world-class IT service and infrastructure in order to catalyze human health research as well as to enhance global scientific research. In particular, the Information Systems group works to provide leadership in the application of high performance computing technologies to genomics. Having seen more than a 400-fold increase in data generation rates over his first two years with The Genome Institute, Mr. Stiehr oversaw the rapid expansion of their storage and computational infrastructure as well as the build-out of their new data center. He and his team strive to provide the best support possible to The Genome Institute community so that the quirks and complexities of technology do not become an impediment but, rather, a catalyst for genomic discovery.
The rate of change of sequencing technologies along with rapidly evolving analysis algorithms and pipelines provide both challenges and opportunities for the Information Systems group. Currently, processing bottlenecks point to effective process optimizations. As the sequencing technology, software and pipelines change, the Information Systems group must adjust to ensure continued optimal operations. Mr. Stiehr is investigating methods whereby research application benchmarking data can be used to automatically characterize the type of disk and computational resources to be allocated at that moment. This will help to more quickly target the most appropriate resources for a given application and data set combination. The usage of the most appropriate resources will enable quicker turnaround and more efficient usage of resources. By maintaining a flexible IT infrastructure, the Information Systems group is able to adapt to these dynamic application needs and thus they are readily able to take on new challenges and opportunities.
Other Biographical Information
Mr. Stiehr received a B.S. degree from the University of Missouri - St. Louis (Computer Science, 2000), a B.A. degree from the University of Missouri - St. Louis (Mathematics, 2000) and an M.S. degree from Washington University in St. Louis (Computer Science, 2004). In 2000, Mr. Stiehr joined the University of Missouri - St. Louis where he led the development and adoption of high performance computing resources by University research groups. In 2004, he joined the Computing Division at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) as part of the U.S. CMS Tier-1 Facilities team building and supporting the Tier-1 regional computing center as part of the Worldwide Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid. In 2006, he joined The Genome Institute at Washington University as the Group Leader for the Information Systems group, which integrates Information Technology expertise with the Center's scientific and laboratory expertise to enable and accelerate the success of projects like The Cancer Genome Atlas, 1000 Genomes, Human Microbiome Project and other projects.
