DIMACS Special Year on Computational Molecular Biology

Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Brunswick NJ

Investigators

Abstract

DIMACS, the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, will run a ``Special Year on Computational Molecular Biology'' to follow up on its highly successful ``Special Year on Mathematical Support for Molecular Biology.'' The special year is motivated by major developments at the interface between biology and information science: The availability of massive amounts of data in novel and diverse forms, requiring the expertise of information scientists; the availability of new technologies, powerful experimental tools that need to be integrated with fundamental algorithmic research; and the development of new mathematical and computational tools that make it possible to understand biological processes at a much more complex level than before. The special year will include workshops, visitors, and the involvement of postdoctoral fellows and graduate students from around the country. Activities will be organized around a series of workshops: Integration of Diverse Biological Data, Sequence Motif Recognition, Whole Genome Comparison, Learning Stochastic Processes, Protein Structure (Recent Computational Advances and Future Directions), System-based Modeling in Bioinformatics, Geometric Searching, Analysis of Gene Expression Data, Computational Issues in Signal Transduction, Protein Structure Comparison and Prediction Assessment, and DNA Topology. This award is co-funded with the Sloan Foundation. NSF funds will specifically be used to support the attendance of young scientists from underrepresented minorities.