On February 15, at 10:00, the OLISSIPO project will host an online talk (live transmission) by Prof. Dan Gusfield, from the University of California. The talk is titled “Integer Linear Programming and SAT-Solving in Computational Biology”.

Date & Time: February 15, 10:00 – 11:00
Where: Online via Zoom (here) or at INESC ID Alves Redol Building I Room 336 (3rd floor) (live transmission)

Abstract: “In this talk I will explain how to use Integer Linear Programming for problems in computational biology, focussing on the problem of RNA folding. This approach has been very successful for a wide range of problems in computational biology. In writing a book on integer programming in computational biology (2019), I examined in depth about 50 such problems. Most solved successfully with ILP. However, there were a few that did not. Then students and I tried using SAT-solving on those harder problems and found that it was more successful on those problems than was ILP, giving another computational tool for computational biology that complements ILP.”

Bio: Prof. Emeritus Dan Gusfield started work in computational biology (around 1982) before the field had a name. He is a Fellow of the ISCB and ACM and was the founding Editor-in-chief of the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, and wrote three books on topics in computational biology (plus two others including one that appeared just last week: Proven Impossible). He wrote the first paper indexed in PubMed with the term “computational biology”. He worked (part-time) at the first DOE Human Genome Center (before NIH became involved in the HGP) and was on the three-person (animal, vegetable, mineral) committee that wrote the proposal to establish the Genome Center at UC Davis, resulting in the largest building on the UCD campus, and hiring of multiple new faculty at UC Davis.