Vortrag im Kolloquium Technische Kybernetik

Dynamics and Control in Systems Biology

Prof. Francis J. Doyle III, Ph.D.

    Time: Tuesday · 18. 12. 2001 · 16:00h
    Place: Room V 9. 31 · Pfaffenwaldring 9 · Campus Stuttgart-Vaihingen

Abstract

Biotechnology has emerged as a major interdisciplinary research area that links such classical fields as biology, chemistry, and engineering. Each of these fields brings a unique set of tools to solve the problems in this emergent discipline. In this talk, the quantitative tools from process systems theory will be presented as an enabling methodology for solving bioengineering problems. Much of our work is motivated by the observation that the human body is a complex chemical factory, composed of many highly interactive multivariable subsystems. It has also been demonstrated that natural "controllers" achieve tight regulation of these systems under a variety of conditions in order to meet stringent performance requirements - thus achieving robust performance. Hence, there is a clear incentive to pursue a quantitative analysis of these regulatory structures - with the dual goals of advancing the understanding of biology, and reverse engineering these natural control loops to introduce new paradigms for control.
Three examples will be used to motivate these ideas:

1. a local neuronal reflex that influences central cardiac control in the rat,
2. robustness analysis of several putative gene networks thought to be responsible for the generation of circadian rhythm in Drosopholia, and
3. identification of gene network models from expression data and regulatory activity data.

   Biographical Sketch

   Dr. FRANCIS J. DOYLE III is a Professor in the Dept. of Chemical Engineering at the University of Delaware. He received his B.S.E. from Princeton (1985), C.P.G.S. from Cambridge (1986), and Ph.D. from Caltech (1991), all in Chemical Engineering. After graduate school, he worked at DuPont as a Visiting Scientist in the Strategic Process Technology Group (1991-1992), then worked as an Assistant Professor at Purdue University in 1992, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1997. He moved to the University of Delaware in the fall of 1997, and was promoted to Professor in 2001.
   His research interests are in process modeling, identification and control with applications to particulate systems, pulp and paper processes, and biosystems. He is the recipient of several research awards (NSF NYI (1992), ONR Young Investigator (1996)) as well as teaching awards (Purdue Potter Award - Engineering Teaching Award (1995), ASEE Section Outstanding Teacher Award (1996), Tau Beta Pi Teaching Award (1996)). In 1998, he was elected as a Fellow of the Institute for Transforming Undergraduate Education (ITUE) at the U. of Delaware, and was elected an academic trustee of CACHE in 1999.