Algebraic statistics for computational biology

Prof. Lior Pachter
Department of Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley

The quantitative analysis of biological sequence data is based on methods from statistics coupled with efficient algorithms from computer science. Algebra provides a framework for unifying many of the seemingly disparate techniques used by computational biologists. The lecture series will offer an introduction to this mathematical framework, and a survey of applications to biological problems such as genome alignment, gene finding and phylogeny construction. A series of lectures based on the first four chapters of the book "Algebraic Statistics for Computational Biology" (Pachter, Sturmfels eds.) will be followed with tutorials highlighting the mathematical foundations and practical applications of some recently developed genomics tools.