Invitation to Systems Biology Seminar Talk

Systems Engineering of Complex Cellular Processes

Prof. Vassily Hatzimanikatis
Laboratory of Computational Systems Biotechnology
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Zeit: Dienstag · 13. 2. 2006 · 16:00 Uhr
    Ort: IST-Seminarraum 3.241 · Pfaffenwaldring 9 · Campus Stuttgart-Vaihingen

Abstract

Current knowledge of biological systems is composed by a vast set of data that accumulate with an increasing rate. Advances in analytical methods and development of sophisticated techniques and instrumentation have provided the tools that allow us to know more than we can understand. However, it is well understood that living organisms are characterized by high complexity. This complexity increases from unicellular organisms to isolated tissue cells and multicellular structures, such as tissues and organs. The development of tools and frameworks that will organize the available biological knowledge and will help in the analysis, understanding, and redesign of biological systems is of immediate importance. Systems engineers, faced with the same problem since the development of the field, have been successful in employing mathematical and computational methods for the development of new products and improved processes.
We will discuss our work on the mathematical modeling and engineering analysis of metabolic reaction networks and of protein synthesis networks. The first part of the discussion will address two problems in metabolic pathway engineering:
(i) The identification of targets for improving the performance of industrial biocatalysts, also known as metabolic control analysis, and
(ii) The discovery and the rational design of novel biosynthetic pathways for the production of useful or novel chemicals.
In the second part of the talk we will use some simple examples from different biological systems to illustrate how systems engineering approaches can be used for the analysis and design of protein synthesis networks.

Biographical Information

Dr. Vassily Hatzimanikatis is currently Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Vassily received a PhD and a MS in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology, and his Diploma in Chemical Engineering from the University of Patras, in Greece. After the completion of his doctoral studies, he held a research group leader position at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland. Prior to joining Northwestern, Vassily worked for three years in DuPont, Cargill, and Cargill Dow, on the development of biocatalysts for the production of industrial chemicals, and for six years as an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
Vassily's research interests are in the areas of systems biotechnology, bioinformatics, and complexity of biological systems. He is associate editor of the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering, and associate editor for Bioinformatics of the journal Metabolic Engineering. He serves on the editorial advisory board of the journals Bioprocess and Biosystems Engineering and Journal of Chemical Technology & Biotechnology. He has published over 40 technical articles and he is co-inventor in two patents.
Vassily was a DuPont Young Professor (2001-2004) and he received the Jay Bailey Young Investigator Best Paper Award in Metabolic Engineering in 2002. While at Northwestern University he received the Teacher of the Year Award from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in 2004. He is currently a member of the Executive Committee of SystemsX, the Swiss Initiative in Systems Biology.