“When Shuaiwen Leon Song boots up Doom 3 and Half-life 2, he does so in the name of science. Song studies high performance computing at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, with the goal of making computers smaller, faster and more energy efficient. A more powerful computer, simply put, can solve greater scientific challenges. Like modeling complex chemical reactions or monitoring the electric power grid. The jump from supercomputers to video games began when Song asked if hardware called 3D stacked memory could do something it was never designed to do: help render 3D graphics. 3D rendering has advanced science with visualizations, models and even virtual reality. It’s also the stuff of video games.”