At SIAM Annual this year, Emily Shuckburgh gave a really great talk about simulation informations in the study of ocean currents. They began with simulations of ocean currents and hypothesized the existence of unstable manifolds in the ocean around Antarctica. Based on this idea, they then looked for evidence of these unstable manifolds in satellite data, and found then. Finally, to VERIFY their existence, then went to Antarctica to drop floats in the ocean to track where they go. These floats followed the expected manifolds!
That’s taking simulation informatics — the initial simulation studies — all the way to real world science!
See the outline here: http://meetings.siam.org/sess/dsp_programsess.cfm?SESSIONCODE=14996
I’m looking for relevant papers to post, but don’t expect to get around to it soon, so don’t expect them to make their way onto this page.
Simulation Informatics 