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The analyzer: Hongyue Dai

	TOM REESE / THE SEATTLE TIMES Hongyue Dai learned computational biology on the fly after leaving behind the pure science of astrophysics and joining Rosetta Inpharmatics in Seattle.
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Seven years ago, Hongyue Dai discovered an atomic particle light years away, and someone asked how it may be useful. "I had no answer," he said.

Dai loved the pure scientific quest for knowledge, but he also wanted to make a practical difference in people's lives, which he couldn't do in astrophysics.

So he switched to industrial pursuits and became a key player on a team at Rosetta Inpharmatics that looked at the 3 billion-letter puzzle of DNA and found this: how to predict whether patients with breast cancer have the kind of genetic makeup that causes cancer to either spread or remain localized.

That knowledge can make it possible to tell whether a patient needs surgery plus chemotherapy, or whether the extra blast of chemo is unnecessary.

Hongyue Dai Age: 39 Occupation: Director, custom analysis, Rosetta Inpharmatics Education: Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Science, Ph.D. in cosmic-ray physics Distinguishing characteristic: Can spot faint patterns in billions of bits of human genomic data. Accomplishment: Used that ability to identify variations in genetic code that cause breast cancer to spread.

Dai, a Chinese immigrant who turns 40 this month, got to that point with no formal training in biology. He did astrophysics work in China, furthered the studies at the University of Utah, and was recruited away to learn computational biology on the fly in the late 1990s with Seattle-based Rosetta.

He says the switch wasn't as difficult as it sounds. His gift is for writing mathematical formulas and computer code to spot faint patterns in strings of data, which the biologists and chemists he works with often don't see.

Each day, Dai is up at 7 a.m., grabs a bagel at his Bothell home and drives an old Honda to work. He's home by 7 p.m. Sometimes he plays driveway hockey with his children, ages 5 and 9. "We obey absolutely no rules," he laughs.

Colleagues say Dai's words carry weight because he's sincere, usually right, and doesn't blow his own horn. He says he gathers energy and motivation from colleagues.

"Dai has a bashful brilliance," said Doug Bassett, general manager of Rosetta Biosoftware. "He's quiet, but the gears are always cranking. He's the one who at the end of a presentation of cutting-edge science has the question that cuts to the heart of the matter."

— Luke Timmerman

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company