Archived Talks

University of Pittsburgh Department of Biomedical Informatics Lecture Announcement

Speaker: Marco F. Ramoni, PhD
Harvard Medical School

Topic: “Statistical Mechanics of Biological Networks”

Wednesday, September 19, 2007
3:00 PM to 4:00 PM
5317 Sennott Square Building, 210 S. Bouquet Street

Abstract: Network models are today extensively used to encode and process biological information. Thanks to over two decades of research in artificial intelligence, statistics and decision theory, methods abound to automatically extract network models from large databases. As we become faster at generating data and smarter at building networks from them, we are rewarded with larger and larger networks. These networks, which may contain tens of thousand of nodes connected by hundreds of thousand of links, are too large to visually inspect and too complex to manually explore. Understanding the information encoded in these networks requires the ability to automatically analyze their topological structure. This talk will describe a statistical mechanics approach to the topological analysis of large-scale networks. It will show that such topological analyses can identify empirically testable hypothesis and, in the field of biological networks, predict functional properties of living systems. The talk will illustrate how these methods can be used for a wide range of tasks, from the identification of the genes involved in the control mechanisms of tumor growth to the prediction of stroke risk and the effectiveness of anti-cancer compounds.

For more information: jxc3@pitt.edu or 412.647.7113