Abstract:

In this talk I argue that informatics (computer science) is not only a 
functional *tool* in the service of Biology, but that it should be a
fundamental part of the mathematics and physics of Biology. In particular, 
certain threads of CS research (which I, incidently, happen to work on) can 
facilitate the proliferation of more unified dynamical systems models into 
Biology. To show what I mean I first give a crash course in verification and
then illustrate with 3 examples: adding timing information to genetic 
regulatory networks, reducing the number of false positives in discrete 
abstractions of continuous dynamical systems and computing tubes of 
trajectories for some nonlinear systems.

bio:

Oded Maler obtained his B.A. in Computer Science from the Technion, Haifa in
1979 and his M.Sc. in Management Science from the University of Tel-Aviv in 
1984. In 1989 he finished his Ph.D. thesis (Finite Automata: Infinite
Behavior, Learnability and Decomposition), under the liberal supervision of 
A. Pnueli in the department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, 
Weizmann Institute, Rehovot. After two years of post-doc at IRISA, Rennes, 
he moved to Grenoble at 1992 and obtained a research position (CR1) at the 
CNRS (French National Center of Scientific Research) in 1994. He has been 
promoted to "research director" (DR2) in 2001. And he lives more or less 
happily ever after.

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Oded Maler             VERIMAG, Centre Equation, 2, av. de Vignate,
38610 Gieres, France. Phone: +33 (0) 456 52 03 74 Fax: 456 52 03 44
Oded.Maler@imag.fr                http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~maler
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