Workshop: 3rd International Summer School on Biocomplexity; August 16 - 23, 2003, Hanover, New Hampshire

Dartmouth College, Hanover NH

Investigators

Abstract

The integration and application of mathematics, engineering, physics and computer science have been recently used to better understand complex biological systems by examining the structure and dynamics of cellular and organism function. This emerging field called "Systems Biology" has gained tremendous interest among molecular and cellular researchers since it provides a continuous spectrum of knowledge. The main objective of this summer school is to expose undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral biological science and bioengineering students to the relatively new approaches of mathematical and computational challenges in Systems Biology to facilitate rapid diffusion of these mathematical and computational tools in the biological sciences. These methods will be helpful, also, to both students and post-doctoral fellows in computer science and mathematics who are interested in pursuing research in biology and bioengineering, since the summer school provides exceptional insights into the fundamental challenges in biological sciences. The summer school uses lectures, oriented toward biological science students, by expert faculty and will focus on biological data mining and knowledge discovery that can be used to understand highly interconnected and complex biological systems. In addition to these lectures, the summer school will employ two 2-hour panel discussions, with active participation of undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral fellows, focused on future developments in systems biology, computational biology, bioinformatics and molecular biology and engineering. In addition, students will present the results of their projects in a culminating poster session, which will facilitate discussion of both the biology and computational approaches. The summer school will stimulate further interdisciplinary research and collaborations among biologists, engineers, mathematicians, computer scientists, and medical researchers, and will help in identifying new, challenging directions in complex biological science and bioengineering research.