The Northeast United States just experienced one of the region’s worst natural disasters. Fortunately, because of the confluence of modern computing power and scientific computing methods, weather forecasting models predicted Sandy’s very complicated trajectory and development with a precision that would not have been possible even a decade ago. Many lives were saved as a result of these predictions.

When scientific computing first emerged in the 1940s, it dramatically increased the ability of researchers in a small number of scientific and engineering disciplines—such as physics and aerospace engineering—to explore new frontiers in science and to change the paradigm for aircraft design. Today, advances in computer technology, the connectivity enabled by the Internet and the explosion of data, are making high-performance computing central to virtually all enterprises, ranging from cutting-edge science, such as analyzing the human genome, to computer-aided design and manufacturing, forecasting the weather, and even using data from social networks to deduce patterns useful for marketing and political forecasting.

Massachusetts is poised to lead this revolution in scientific inquiry and reap the economic gains associated with it. Academic research institutions, technology companies and state government are all working to advance the computational capability and research needed for the discoveries and innovations that lie ahead.

This effort is embodied and supported by a state-of-the-art, high-performance computing center tucked into the old mill city of Holyoke, Mass. Powered by a natural power source, the Connecticut River, the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC) will be a model of efficient and environmentally sustainable design, construction and operations.

The MGHPCC, scheduled to open in November, will be operated by a nonprofit organization created by five of the region’s leading research universities—Boston University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts. The facility was financed by the participating universities with the help of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the federal New Markets Tax Credit Program, and partnering technology companies, EMC and Cisco.

In conceptualizing the facility, the universities set as a goal collaboration among their institutions so they could take on scientific and societal challenges that may be too big for just one of even the world’s leading research universities. This collaboration promises to have a profound impact on both scientific inquiry and the region’s economy.

The collaboration has already begun. Earlier this year, the universities awarded $600,000 in seed grants to seven multi-university teams working on issues ranging from the marine ecosystem off the New England coast, to medical imaging, to advances in computer science and engineering. The selected projects span all three of the key facets of research computing: the use of computers as a tool for scientific discovery, development of application software that enables new types of research, and computer science research that points the way toward next generation “exascale” computer systems. In an indicator of the enthusiasm for the facility among our university researchers, 37 teams applied for grants.

The opening of the MGHPCC is accompanied by a flurry of recent activity related to high-performance computing in Massachusetts. For example:

• Gov. Deval Patrick has announced the creation of the Massachusetts Big Data Initiative, a series of initiatives to expand the state’s position as a world leader in Big Data—the collection and analysis of large amounts of data, a growing information technology need as companies seek solutions to easily handle data across a broad spectrum of industries and uses such as genomics, climate change, cancer research and healthcare cost reduction.

• The National Science Foundation has awarded funds to support a $2.3 million Major Research Infrastructure project that will fund the acquisition and operation of a computer system that will be shared among several universities and support research ranging from fundamental studies of matter and materials to monitoring and measuring the health of the planet. Computer science academics from the participating institutes will work with the domain scientists on this project, researching new systems level paradigms that can help make high-performance computing more readily used in everyday research workflows.

• Boston University has opened the Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering, which will drive discovery and innovation through the use of computational and data-driven approaches. The Institute’s creation reflects the “computational lens” through which scientists now look at the world.

All of this activity will drive economic growth. The region’s academic research community is not only an important economic sector in its own right, but it turns out the people, discoveries and innovations that will power the knowledge companies of the future.

At the same time, the MGHPCC is setting a new sustainability standard for data centers, which are typically huge users of energy. It starts with the center’s location in Holyoke, where the local power company, Holyoke Gas & Electric, generates more than 70% of its power from a dam on the Connecticut River. The facility is also designed for high efficiency—leveraging the cold New England air, for example—reducing by a factor of five the amount of energy for cooling, compared with a typical data center. The focus on efficiency and sustainability extends to every detail, including the reuse of demolition material.

Not surprisingly for a building envisioned, designed and used by scientists, the MGHPCC is also a living laboratory, outfitted with sensors and other equipment that will collect data that will be used to improve future building design.

The Massachusetts economy has always been driven by innovation. It was true in Holyoke during the late 1800s and early 1900s, when entrepreneurs built canals to harness the power of the Connecticut River to manufacture paper. It was true during the technology revolutions in computers, the Internet and life sciences. With the help of the MGHPCC, it will be true of the Massachusetts economy to come.

Robert A. Brown is the president of Boston University and chair of the board of the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center.

Universities typically emerge as gatekeepers of the professions, by wresting control over the training and certification that is required. The process generally begins outside academe—with apprenticeships and voluntary associations—and evolves toward a new norm of academic credit and degrees. Faculty then become the experts who determine the body of knowledge budding professionals need to know in a field—as they develop scholarship that supports that profession. Research-oriented faculty trained in doctoral programs emerge to lead in this process. These academics then determine admissions standards and curricular hurdles so that the profession’s leadership is confident that individuals have been sorted and screened for the best to surface as future representatives of that profession.

An academic discipline and a profession eventually converge through the relationship, division of labor and trust between universities and professional associations—and their mutual respect for the authority and the respective roles of one another. Sometimes, professional associations evaluate academic programs or even provide an examination at the end of the education process. But the growing portfolio of academic programs over the past century is the direct result of more and more professions coming under the purview of the academy.

One exception has been the actuarial field. Few of us know much about this occupation, nor appreciate the pivotal role that actuaries play in our lives. An actuary analyzes the financial consequence of insurable risk, and then, for example, sets premiums for insurance companies or evaluates whether pension plans are adequately funded. An actuary determines if a young driver of a powerful sports car should pay more for auto insurance than an aging professor who drives a 20-year old jalopy. An actuary determines our health insurance costs. No one gets out of this world alive—the actuary handles the hard part of forecasting the when and the how. These are the quants in the back office, invisible yet indispensable to the public. They play moneyball with matters far more important than professional sports.

The actuary applies sophisticated mathematics and statistics to the dilemma of risk: how best to quantify the unknowable and assess probabilities so that an uncertain outcome can be somehow anticipated. Their work might be hidden to the public, but their impact on everyday life is nonetheless significant. They have been called the bookies of the insurance industry. The trust that consumers have in their insurance companies when they hand over large premium payments today for benefits that might need to be paid out decades later results from the integrity and intelligence of actuarial professionals. Even with a mega-catastrophe such as Hurricane Katrina, the insurance companies were prepared to honor all legitimate claims.

Actuaries calibrate what becomes the necessary equilibrium between the self-interest of the individual and that of a corporation—so each can have the security necessary to transact a long-term relationship for an otherwise unknowable future.

Remarkably, only a minority of the 28,000 actuaries studied the discipline of Actuarial Science in college. The true gatekeepers for this profession are the Society of Actuaries (SOA), founded in 1949 (but with roots more than a century old) and the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS), established in 1914. Collectively, they determine and test the knowledge and skills of those seeking to enter this highly selective field. Although open to all, this lengthy series of rigorous exams serves as a sieve that limits the number of candidates who successfully complete the gauntlet.  Standards have been established with about a 50-50 chance of success on just the first two of the several examinations. The content of these exams is written by committed volunteers in the SOA/CAS. This sequence of examinations is much more than comparable to the rigor of most university master’s degree programs both in the hours of study required and in the difficulty of the material. There are few independent professional associations with this much authority and autonomy over the credentialing of their members.

This is now one of the best-compensated fields for entry-level jobs, paying an average of $50-$60,000 to start. Some schools have undergraduate majors in Actuarial Science, for those who choose this seemingly dry field as teenagers. Given how invisible this is to most young people, the more prevalent path is a solid undergraduate mathematics or statistics major, followed by self-study toward the initial SOA exams. A shadow industry of test prep tools—study guides, videos, classes and online programs—has emerged to aid those on this path.

Yet another, now more common pathway into the profession is through a master’s degree programs in Actuarial Science. These programs are very appealing to talented students in their 20s and beyond who did not consider the profession initially as undergraduates, but would now like to seek a professional direction for themselves or perhaps change careers. For someone holding a full-time job, or otherwise away from the classroom for a couple of years, fearful of self-study, looking for a practical degree that builds on their more abstract undergraduate major, the draw of the Actuarial Science as a post-baccalaureate endeavor is powerful.

Typically, these programs are taught by a blend of academic faculty from mathematics and statistics departments and practitioners—generally current or retired Fellows of the Societies—who teach courses in their unique area of specialization. Given SOA’s and CAS’s selectivity, those with this credential often have the capability to teach complex material such as pension mathematics or survival models. The curriculum is typically aligned with the SOA and CAS examinations—and when the exam content changes, course content follows. The best programs go further, introducing students to the various corporate sectors that employ actuaries—life insurance, health care, predictive modeling, property insurance, or pension practice—so their graduates will have a more complete understanding of the profession they are about to enter.

These academic programs are seeing burgeoning enrollments—even though an academic degree is not necessary to become an actuary. The national focus on health care insurance, publicity on how the profession ranks in starting salaries and job satisfaction, and the growing need for actuaries in the fast-growing economies in China and India—have made advanced degrees in Actuarial Science more appealing.

Rarely does an established profession in a field as sophisticated, intricate and quantitative as actuarial science thrive outside the realm of academe, depend so much on a voluntary association of professionals, and yet not even require a college degree for entry. Even when higher education offers a degree in Actuarial Science, this field might be the major example of where academe humbly defers to the wisdom and hegemony of a profession.

Jay A. Halfond is dean of Metropolitan College at Boston University. Lois K. Horwitz is associate professor of the Practice and Chair of Actuarial Science at Metropolitan College.

To listen as many of us incessantly complain, one would think academe is chronically resistant to change, new ideas and innovative programs. We often hear the smaller the stakes, the greater the petty battles—no opportunity is too minute to stall and impede. Before tenure, junior faculty need to be protected while they build their publications dossier; after tenure, they no longer need to care or demonstrate any institutional commitment or loyalty. Professional schools lag behind their professions rather than provide cutting-edge wisdom for their next generation, as faculty rely on their reservoir of dated materials and perspectives.

Or so we often hear.

I believe we don’t give ourselves enough credit for innovation and creative thinking within higher education. The soap operas of entrenched faculty, factions divided over trivia, professors protecting their sub-disciplines, lengthy and convoluted approval processes, and ongoing acrimony and melodrama all overshadow progress made without fanfare. The longer view of the history of the American college and university clearly demonstrates the responsiveness to changing societal needs and opportunities—with faculty often at the forefront of that change.

If a growing creative class, to use Richard Florida’s term, is the catalyst for our dynamic society, then the university is its temple. Cruise control is anathema to the academic temperament. Academics’ very psyche draws them to tinker rather than stagnate. Faculty are innately restless. Even when they devote their entire adult life to one institution, faculty often reinvent themselves several times over the course of their careers. This is one of the undervalued appeals of the academic life and the malleability of the academic enterprise. Professional lives can change even when titles do not. Faculty can move in and out of various roles. Universities, consequently, have been remarkably adaptable and even protean institutions over the centuries—and very capable of reinvention and delivering new knowledge and value to their expanding constituents. While the list of top corporations changed dramatically over the course of the past century, America’s leading universities have not: far more because of their resilience than their resistance to change.

David Riesman, sympathetic to the impediments that leaders face in higher education, coined the term “faculty veto group” to characterize the negative force faculty play in moving their institutions forward. Faculty block but rarely facilitate; micromanage and second-guess, rather than support their institution’s leadership. Though there is no denying the inherent intransigence in this stereotype, just as often faculty quietly innovate. We look for evidence of blockbuster changes when modest, incremental change is far more common, less detectable, and perhaps much more desirable. By focusing on the challenge of introducing major transformations or innovations, it is easy to overlook the march forward from ideas far more discreet, minute and local, though cumulatively perhaps even more impactful.

I would distinguish between micro- and macro-innovation—one a baby step and the other a major leap, one whispers and the other screams, the first overlooked and the latter overrated. Micro doesn’t mean mini; introducing innovations in the classroom, reinventing course content, developing interesting scholarly projects each pave the way for even larger breakthrough events. We tend to elevate and romanticize vision and self-proclaimed paradigm shifts, as if these are frequent and planned. “If you are having visions,” former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt once said, “you should see a doctor.” Beware the prophet, but study the plodder. What is micro today can lead to macro tomorrow—with the foundation, reassurance and wisdom that help to ensure success. Lasting innovation benefits as much by slow cooking as stir-frying. So, let’s give a cheer or two to the academics we too often berate for their inertia.

Forecasting the future of various possible actions—or inactions—has inherent false negatives (thinking something looks safe, and it isn’t) and false positives (fearing something bad will occur, and it doesn’t). Potential risk should never paralyze an organization, but there are ways to mitigate that risk: seize concrete opportunities, take trial-and-error steps that minimize large investments or lingering commitments, select options that permit a variety of alternative paths, and avoid dependency on any set outcome. Academic innovators find ways for their institutions to be nimble rather than calcified, and avoid public megafailures. There are few institutions as unforgiving and intolerant of failure as academe.

In my experience, the most successful innovations occurred through steps that wouldn’t have been catastrophic if aborted, and worked out in ways, frankly, no one even predicted or planned. I would modify the popular business cliché “disruptive technology” to suggest that academe benefits most by its disruptive pedagogy. Trying new things causes old habits and assumptions to be revisited. While I am coining new jargon, I would also introduce the phrase “planned serendipity.” Strong academic leaders place themselves in the path of potentially good ideas and capitalize on them.

Chocolatier Willie Wonka morphed Thomas Edison’s famous edict (invention is 99% percent perspiration and 1% inspiration) into a slightly different, more mathematically-challenged formula: “Invention, my dear friends, is ninety-three percent perspiration, six percent electricity, four percent evaporation, and two percent butterscotch ripple.”

Effective academic leaders cleverly bring the butterscotch to the party.

Jay A. Halfond is dean of Metropolitan College and Extended Education at Boston University.

Following last week's 8.9 magnitude earthquake off Northeastern Japan, continuing aftershocks and a massive tsunami, colleges and universities are keeping a close eye on that part of the world. Below are some updates from New England institutions.

• Boston University's Daily Free Press reports BU students in Tokyo O.K.
• 19 Yale Students Safe in Tokyo, reports The New Haven Register
• WTNH says two Conn. College students in Japan O.K.
• 31 UNH Students Safe in Japan, reports UnionLeader.com
• The Morning Sentinel of Maine reports 1 U. of Maine Farmington student O.K., 3 Colby students "unreachable"
• Boston Globe reports MIT grad. student studying disaster planning returns home from Japan safe but shocked
• Darmouth College reports 60 students and staff are safe in Japan

About 18,000 New England residents, including 10,000 from Greater Boston, live in Japan, according to the Boston Globe. Last week, local Japanese student associations gathered at MIT to discuss the situation. Among other relief efforts, a group of doctors from Massachusetts General Hospital arranged travel plans to Sendai.

Award-winning film director, producer and writer Spike Lee will speak about his life, his work and the capacity for film to effect social change, during a talk at Boston University's George Sherman Union on Wednesday Oct. 6, at 4 p.m.

The event is free and open to the public. No RSVP required. Admission is first-come, first-served.