Virtually every student, faculty, and staff member has access to a personal computer with substantial computational power and versatility. It is not uncommon to find several computers in the offices and laboratories of faculty, and students use a variety of computers in University facilities. Numerous students and faculty carry small laptop computers wherever they go with the computational power of the massive mainframe systems of a decade ago. In summary, network computing has literally revolutionized the way in which we do our science. It has vastly broadened our access to information, improved our ability to interact with colleagues globally, and provided us easy access to the data we need to do our research.
Science is discovery, and computing has become instrumental in that discovery process.