Carl Kesselman: Engineering the Invisible Engines of Science

Carl Kesselman has spent his career building the invisible scaffolding of modern science. From grid computing to biomedical data platforms, his work bridges disciplines, institutions, and decades, always with an eye toward what lies just beyond the edge of what’s possible.

At USC’s Information Sciences Institute, Kesselman helped pioneer global-scale systems that enabled the discovery of the Higgs boson, advanced climate modeling, and reimagined how scientists collaborate. But he’s just as focused on the small, messy, creative teams where innovation truly lives. In this interview, he traces a path from high-performance computing to neuroscience, revealing how ISI became a laboratory not just for new technologies, but for new methods of doing science itself.

Kesselman believes the next scientific revolution won’t come from a faster algorithm, it will come from changing how we share, fail, and learn.