Some Challenges in Computational Biology?

M. Vidyasagar, Executive Vice President of Tata Consultancy Services:

Wednesday, April 23rd at 4:30pm, Princeton University, Friend 006

In this talk, I will discuss several problems in computational biology that can be analyzed using some standard methods in engineering and/or applied mathematics. The problems discussed include: optimal string alignment, prediction of protein secondary structure, and classification of proteins. The methods discussed include: dynamic programming, neural networks (both feedforward and recurrent), and hidden Markov models. The progress to dates is reviewed, and some unsolved problems are indicated.

Dr. Mathukumalli Vidyasagar was born in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh on 29 September 1947. He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees, all in Electrical Engineering, from the University of Wisconsin, in 1965, 1967, and 1969, respectively. Between 1969 and 1989, he worked as a Professor of Electrical Engineering at various universities in the USA and Canada. His last overseas job was with the University of Waterloo, Canada between 1980-89. In 1989 he returned to India as the Director of the newly-created Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR), under the auspices of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Ministry of Defence, Government of India. In that capacity he built up CAIR into a leading research laboratory consisting of about 40 scientists working on various cutting-edge areas such as aircraft control, robotics, neural networks, and image processing. In 2000 he joined Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India's largest IT firm, as an Executive Vice President in charge of Advanced Technology. In this capacity he created the Advanced Technology Centre (ATC), which currently consists of about 60 engineers and scientists working on e-security, advanced encryption methods, and bioinformatics. In addition to his academic positions, he has held visiting positions at several universities including MIT, California (Berkeley), Califomia (Los Angeles), CNRS Toulouse, France; Indian Institute of Science; University of Minnesota and Tokyo Institute of Technology. He is the author or coauthor of nine books and more than one hundred and thirty papers in archival journals. He has received several honours in recognition of his research activities including the Distinguished Service Citation from his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is a Fellow of IEEE as well as the Indian Academy of Sciences; the Indian National Science Academy, the Indian National Academy of Engineering and the Third World Academy of Sciences.