A computer laboratory is being established for instruction in and experimentation with quantitative models in biological systems. The lab is being furnished with 20 workstations, each equipped with a fast processor and floating point co-processor, 4 megabytes of memory, color graphics display, color printer, and mouse, networked to a server/supervisor workstation. The users of this lab are primarily first and second year biology majors and students enrolled in the core biology course. Students use software developoed by the P.I.s to carry out experiments in genetics, population biology, and enzyme kinetics. The software uses high-resolution graphics, sophisticated numerical routines and a comfortable used interface. This project demonstrates that computing equipment can supplement and enrich traditional laboratory approaches and permit early and effective introduction of quantitative analysis in biology. The software will be distributed to a wide audience. The university will contribute an amount equal to the award.
