Event
ISR Distinguished Lecturer: Frank Allgöwer, "Systems Biology"
Monday, October 15, 2007
5:00 p.m.
1202 Martin Hall (Resnik Auditorium)
Regina King
301 405 6615
rking12@umd.edu
http://www.isr.umd.edu/events/dls.htm
Systems Biology: How Can Control Engineers Help to Understand Biology?
Frank Allgöwer
Director, Institute for Systems Theory and Automatic Control
Professor, Mechanical Engineering Department
University of Stuttgart, Germany
Reception at 4:30 p.m. outside 1202 Martin Hall
Lecture at 5:00 p.m., 1202 Martin Hall
Roundtable discussion Tuesday, Oct. 16 at 10:30 a.m., 2168 A.V. Williams Building
Host
ISR Director Eyad Abed
Abstract
During the last decade, biology has faced a technological revolution with the development of high-throughput methods for the characterization of the genome, transcriptome and proteome and has given rise to an unprecedented amount of biological data. For the first time in history this data allows for a systematic mathematical modeling of a huge class of biological processes and phenomena with one of the goals being to complement in vivo experiments by computer simulations.
In this talk the role of systems theory and control for the development of the new field of systems biology will be discussed. In particular we will argue that the role of the systems sciences is not restricted to supporting the mathematical modeling process, but that systems theoretic investigations will play an important role for developing a better understanding of life. Conversely, the field of systems and control can also learn greatly from the way nature solves regulation problems in its highly complex networks. It can be expected that in the future systems biology will stimulate the development of new control paradigms inspired by nature.
Biography
Frank Allgöwer is director of the Institute for Systems Theory and Automatic Control and professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Stuttgart in Germany. He studied Engineering Cybernetics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Stuttgart and the University of California at Los Angeles respectively. He received his Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Stuttgart. Prior to his present appointment he held a professorship in the electrical engineering department at ETH Zurich. He also held visiting positions at Caltech, the NASA Ames Research Center, the DuPont Company and the University of California at Santa Barbara.
His main interests in research and teaching are in the area of systems and control with emphasis on the development of new methods for the analysis and control of nonlinear systems. Of equal importance to the theoretical developments are practical applications and the experimental evaluation of benefits and limitations of the developed methods. Applications range from chemical process control and control of mechatronic systems to control of atomic force microscopes and systems biology.
At present Frank Allgöwer is Editor for the journal Automatica, Associate Editor of the Journal of Process Control and the European Journal of Control and is on the editorial board of several further journals including the Journals of Robust and Nonlinear Control, IET Control Theory and Applications, Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering, the journal Chemical Engineering Science and the Springer Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences Series. Among others he serves on the scientific council of the German Society for Measurement and Control, is on the Board of Governors of the IEEE Control System Society, is chairman of the IFAC Technical Committee on Nonlinear Systems, is member of the IFAC Policy Committee and chairman of the International Affairs Committee of IEEE CSS and has been a member of the council of the European Union Control Association.
He has been organizer or co-organizer of several international conferences and has published over 150 scientific articles. Frank received several recognitions for his work including the IEEE distinguished lectureship, the appointment as IFAC Fellow and the Leibniz prize, which is the most prestigious prize in science and engineering awarded by the German National Science Foundation (DFG).
