Computer scientists Eli Upfal, Fabio Vandin, and Ben Raphael designed software to focus on groups of genes. Credit: Mike Cohea/Brown University

Computer scientists Eli Upfal, Fabio Vandin, and Ben Raphael designed software to focus on groups of genes. “Instead of identifying individual players,” Raphael asked, “can we identify the conspiracy?” Credit: Mike Cohea/Brown University by Richard Lewis

This summer, more than a hundred scientists from dozens of research institutions published a landmark paper that identified a single gene responsible for the most prevalent form of ovarian cancer. Their success hinged in no small part on an ingenious algorithm ...