Interdisciplinary Seminar on Biological Networks

Starting Tuesday, 7 February 2012, an

    Interdisciplinary Seminar on Biological Networks

will take place at Utrecht University.

Networks are becoming increasingly important in core areas of biology and their study has important applications, for example, in personalized medicine and biotechnology. Mathematical and computational techniques play a key role in understanding these networks. This seminar covers some of the most relevant topics in this area.

Up-to-date information about the seminar is on http://www.cwi.nl/biological-networks-uu-2012

Target group: This seminar is intended for master students and beginning PhD students. It will be truly interdisciplinary, and students from mathematics, biology, bioinformatics, and computer science as well as other disciplines are welcome. The seminar covers aspects of graph theory, network analysis, algorithmics, combinatorial optimization, computational complexity, statistics, probability theory, and cell biology, and knowledge in at least one of these fields as well as interest in the others is a hard requirement for participation. The number of ECTS points depends on contribution and/or size of a project, but the maximum is 8 ECTS points. The seminar will take place on Tuesdays at Utrecht University, the exact place and time slot is still to be decided.

The number of participants is limited to 20. If you are possibly interested in participating, please send an e-mail to gunnar.klau@cwi.nl with name, background, interests and preference for time slot.

Motivation and Topics: It has turned out that the complexity of life is rather due to complex interactions between molecules than to the complexity of single entities. Consequently, research in the life sciences has focused on studying systems of interactions such as regulatory, metabolic, signaling, and interaction networks. Mathematical and computational techniques play a key role in understanding these networks and this seminar focuses on some of their core contributions to network biology:

* Introduction to cell biology and biological networks, basic graph theory
* Network analysis. (Random) network models and their properties. Network motifs and modules.
* Networks in inference: Protein function, disease genes, drug targets
* Network modules. Clustering and bi-clustering.
* Network mining: Active/dysfunctional subnetworks. Classification.
* Network evolution and comparison. Alignment and queries.
* Late-breaking results (from the top conferences RECOMB and ISMB)

Format: We will discuss original work on one topic in each class, which is presented by one or two students. Assignment of topics will take place in January. In addition, there is the possibility to do an additional small project on a topic of choice. Grades will be given based on the presentation, active participaction in interdisciplinary discussions, and a possible final project.

Lecturer: Gunnar Klau, Life Sciences Group, Centrum Wiskunde&Informatica (CWI)