Where academic tradition
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TUCS Distinguished Lecture on 9.11.: Esko Ukkonen

Friday, November 9, 2012 at 13.15

ICT Building, Auditorium Lambda
Coffee served from 12:45

Esko Ukkonen, University of Helsinki, Finland: "Stringology and Bioinformatics"

Host: Ralph-Johan Back, Åbo Akademi University

Abstract: Since the invention of DNA sequencing in the 1970's, the analysis of molecular biological sequences has been an inspiring source of computational problems. Unlike most data in natural sciences, the biological sequence data such as DNA and amino acid sequences is discrete rather than continuous by nature. Hence biological sequence analysis is, in addition to fields like text processing and information retrieval, another natural application area of combinatorial algorithms for strings (stringology). A new discipline, called bioinformatics or computational biology has emerged. With the advent of high-throughput sequencing the amount of sequence data has exploded, making molecular biology research totally dependent on efficient computation. The talk will discuss some computational problems, algorithmic techniques and future goals of bioinformatics, ranging from the genome reconstruction and sequence indexing to the analysis of gene regulation.

Biography: Masakazu Ohashi is a professor at Graduate School and Faculty of Policy Studies, Chuo University, Japan. His research activity covers the system for the next generation networking social systems and Social Design. He is a chair of International Standardization Committee of e-Tendering and Procurement, Executive Board Member of Foundation, Japan Construction of Information Center and Service Center of Port Engineering (e-Tendering and Procurement Center of Public Work) and the top executive of Time Business Form (Time Authentication). He is a vice-president of The Infosocionomics Society in Japan and a member of UN/CEFACT TBG6. He was a president of Web Services Initiative (2004-2007) and Internet Data Center Initiative (2000-2007) in Japan. He published many books and presents papers at the international conferences and journals regarding Authentication and the next generation social systems.

The TUCS Distinguished Lecture Series is a forum for public lectures by outstanding national and international researchers in all aspects of computing, coming both from academia and industry. All lectures are free and open to the public.

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