Today is the inaugural Computational Research Day at Northwestern. We’re recording the keynote lectures presented throughout the day, ranging in topics from how to teach a computer to learn common sense in Carnegie Mellon’s NEIL program to the atomistic simulations of nanoscale mechanisms. The importance of big data is only increasing for research all around the world, and today’s lectures and discussions will serve to better prepare Northwestern and everyone we have the opportunity to work with for present and future research challenges.