Case Studies

SOLUTIONS

Nobel Laureate Relies Daily on X1 to Sift Through Academic Research

Background

Dr. Michael Levitt is a 2013 Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry and a highly regarded Professor of Structural Biology at Stanford University. The Nobel Committee awarded Dr. Levitt a Nobel in recognition of his research in computational biology, “for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems.” As a “huge fan” of X1, Dr. Levitt sent an unsolicited email to X1 President and CEO, John Patzakis, to let him know how essential X1 Search was to his daily work, research and professional productivity.

“X1 saves me many hours per week. I cannot survive without it.”

The Business Challenge

A computer-savvy scientist who relies on a Macintosh laptop with VMWare virtualization running a Windows OS, Dr. Levitt’s stores 200 gigabytes of critical data, including 40 gigabytes of over 300,000 emails. He needed a tool to help make quick sense of it all without compromising decades of research and important communications with fellow academics.

Solution

Dr. Levitt credits X1 Search’s lightning-fast, iterative and faceted search capability, reliability and stability, as enabling him to quickly and tactically sift through 200 gigabytes of emails and academic research.

“X1 is an intimate part of my workflow — it is essentially an extension of my mind when I engage in information retrieval, which is many times an hour during my workday.”

“People use the term ‘big data’ a lot these days, but the most important ‘big data’ for me is the 200 gigabytes on my laptop that consists of decades of research, important communications with fellow academics, and other key resources. X1 enables me to find what I am looking for instantaneously. It is a very effective interface to all of my information. Next to my computer itself, X1 is the one tool I can’t do without,” explained Dr. Levitt.

Dr. Levitt’s testimonial echoes similar sentiments expressed by many high-powered business professionals at top financial institutions, major law firms, consulting companies and science and engineering firms. They all rely on X1 Search to dramatically enhance their productivity by quickly locating their information amongst an ever-increasing avalanche of emails and other data.

We here at X1 extend our congratulations to Dr. Levitt for his 2013 Nobel prize in Chemistry, as well as our sincere thanks to him for reaching out to us and sharing his enthusiastic feedback on X1 search, which, incidentally, is completely gratis. “Just keep developing great software” is all he asked for in return.