This project will support the 7th International Summer School on Biocomplexity from Gene to System during July 1-7, 2008 at Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey. The main objective of this summer school is to expose undergraduate and graduate biological science and bioengineering students to the relatively new approaches of the mathematical and computational challenges in Systems Biology and the new directions in computational biology, bioinformatics and molecular engineering research and to facilitate rapid diffusion of these mathematical and computational tools in the biological sciences. These methods will be helpful, also, to students in computer science and mathematics who are interested in pursuing research in biology, biomolecular engineering and bioengineering, since the summer school provides exceptional insights into the fundamental challenges in biological sciences. The NSF funds will be used to support ten US senior undergraduate and graduate students, and 5 faculty members.
The summer school will use lectures, oriented toward biological science students, by expert faculty and will focus on the relatively new approaches of the mathematical and computational challenges in neuroscience and neural engineering and the new directions in computational neuroscience, neural informatics and neurotechnology. In addition to these lectures, the summer school will include 2 two-hour panel discussion, with active participation of undergraduate and graduate students, focused on (1) computational neural engineering: advances and challenges; and (2) the Future directions: In Neural Engineering from Gene to System. In addition, students will present their research activities in their departments and institutes in a poster session, which will facilitate discussion of both the biology and computational approaches.
The broaders impacts are very strong. The summer school will stimulate further interdisciplinary research and collaborations among engineers, mathematicians, computer scientists, and medical researchers, and will help in identifying new, challenging directions in complex biological science and bioengineering research.
This award is co-funded by the Biomedical Engineering Program and Office of International Science and Engineering.
