Seminar

Multi-Scale Modeling of HIV Dynamics
Using a Grid-based System-level Approach

Prof. Peter M.A. Sloot
Scientific Director, Informatics Institute
University of Amsterdam

20 January 2009 (Tuesday)
1030 hours @ LT10
Nanyang Technological University
50 Nanyang Avenue
Singapore 639798

Abstract

Recent advances in experimental techniques such as detectors, sensors, and scanners have opened up new windows into physical and biological and man-made processes on many levels of detail. The complete cascade from the individual components to the fully integrated multi-science systems crosses many orders of magnitude in temporal and spatial scales. The challenge is to study not only the fundamental processes on all these separate scales, but also their mutual coupling through the scales in the overall system, and the resulting emergent properties. These complex systems display endless signatures of order, disorder, self-organization and self-annihilation. Understanding, quantifying and handling this information complexity is one of the biggest scientific challenges of our time.

Biodata

Prof. Peter M.A. Sloot studied chemistry and physics, finished his Computational BioPhysics PhD work at the Dutch Cancer institute (NKI) in 1988 with Prof. Carl Figdor and did various postdocs abroad. In 1996 he was awarded the prestigious chair in Numerical Physics from the Dutch Physics Society and since 2001 he is a full professor in Computational Sciences at the Faculty of Science of the Universiteit van Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In his research, he focuses on the theory and application of complex systems through distributed mesoscopic computer simulation; trying to understand how information progresses through various spatial and temporal scales. He is strongly interested in applying his idea’s to BioMedical systems.

Internationally he is a strong advocate of the field of Computational Science: he has been the General Chair of the ICCS series of conferences on Computational Sciences since 2002 and director of the related MSc program. Up to 2007 he has co-edited with Prof. Jack Dongarra over 20,000 peer reviewed pages of research from this conference series in Springer’s LNCS. He is an external advisor to the UK eScience Strategic Advisory Team and Editor in Chief of the Elsevier’s science journal: Future Generation of Computing Systems as well as Associate editor of The International Transactions on Systems Science and Applications.

For enquiries about this seminar, please contact Assoc Prof Cai Wentong, Head, Division of Computer Science, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore at aswtcai@ntu.edu.sg.