The human race has invested about a trillion dollars in the development of semiconductor electronics, and our lives have been improved greatly as a result. Smart devices are now taken for granted and permeate every aspect of our existence. The development of such complex devices is extremely difficult and error-prone, thus the IC design community has made large investments in synthesis, simulation, verification, and overall automation to allow such designs to be built. It turns out, happily, that much of this Silicon R&D is applicable to other areas... This talk will be about one such area, namely that of Proton radiation cancer therapy, where a team at IBM, working with researchers at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Research center, have been busy applying knowledge from VLSI to this important area, and producing results that are poised to revolutionize the quality and efficiency of such therapy.