Eric Schadt's Network

Pacific Biosciences's Eric Schadt doesn't want to be just a scientist, says this fast-paced Esquire piece, he wants to be a "master of information." Since the one-gene-at-a-time approach doesn't seem to be working, Schadt says, why not look at many genes and proteins and their networks? "The networks between genes and proteins turn out to be organized socially, like human networks, and so human social networks will be required to understand them ... with Eric Schadt at their center," Esquire's Tom Junod writes. Stephen Friend tells Junod that Schadt has sold biologists on complexity. "Eric gets you to understand that it's out of complexity that a pattern derives. That complexity is not the enemy but the vehicle of understanding, and embracing it is how you get there," Friend says.