UCI to Host Seminar by Pevzner on Bioinformatics
By Anna Lynn Spitzer
Distinguished Speaker SeriesPresented by UCI's Institute for Genomics and Bioinformatics
Co-sponsored by Calit²:
Seminar on Bioinformatics
Presenter: Dr. Pavel A. Pevzner
Host: UCI's Institute for Genomics and Bioinformatics
Date: Monday, October 11, 2002
Time: 4:00pm
Location: McDonnell Douglas Auditorium
Abstract: Pattern discovery is a fundamental problem in computer science and molecular biology with important applications in locating regulatory sites. In its simplest form, the signal finding problem can be formulated as follows: Given a sample of sequences and an unknown pattern/motif that appears at different unknown positions in each sequence, can we find the unknown pattern?
Despite many studies, this problem is far from being solved: Many motifs in DNA sequences are so complicated that we don't yet have good models or reliable algorithms for their recognition. Many existing pattern finding algorithms are implementations of different local search strategies. The shortcoming of these algorithms is that, for subtle signals, they often converge to local optima that represent random patterns rather than the real one.
We describe recent combinatorial and machine-learning approaches to detecting very subtle signals that push the performance of motif finding algorithms to its theoretical limit. (This is joint work with Eleazar Eskin, Mikhail Gelfand, Uri Keich, and Sing-Hoi Sze.)
Dr. Pevzner's research interests include fragment assembly in DNA sequencing, pattern discovery and signal finding in DNA, computational mass spectrometry, genome rearrangements, normalized sequence alignment, and optimization of DNA array manufacturing. Dr. Pevzner has more than 100 articles and conference presentations to his credit, has served on several editorial boards, and is a sought-after speaker and consultant. He is the author of "Computational Molecular Biology: An Algorithmic Approach" (MIT Press, 2000), and he is a co-inventor on a patent for a method to calculate and design extremely specific oligonucleotide probes for DNA and mRNA hybridization procedures. Dr. Pevzner earned his Ph.D. at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and he served on the faculties of the University of Southern California and Pennsylvania State University before coming to UCSD in 2000.
Dr Pevzner's talk is one of several in the Distinguished Speaker Series for 2002-2003 presented by UCI's Institute for Genomics and Bioinformatics. Calit² will co-sponsor two more talks in the series later in 2002-2003. The presentation is part of the Distinguished Speaker Series presented by
UCI's Institute for Genomics and Bioinformatics. This presentation is co-sponsored by Calit².For more information on the institute and the complete series of presentations, see http://www.igb.uci.edu/.