Dr Stuart Kauffman
Dr Stuart Kauffman
iCORE Chair, Biocomplexity and Informatics
University of Calgary
Dr
Stuart Kauffman receives funding from his iCORE Chair award ($4.55M), a
CFI grant ($710K) and a grant from Alberta Science and Research
Investments Program ($1.1M).
Research Program Overview
The field of genetic regulatory network research is exploding in this
coming decade. With the human genome spread before us, the genomes of
many other organisms similarly sequenced (and others on the way)
researchers have an unprecedented opportunity to establish a new
quantitative science of genomics.
To understand the living state-from the perspectives of Systems Biology
and non-equiliabrium thermodynamics-the areas of physics, chemistry,
biology, computer science, and mathematics must be explored. Heading
the iCORE Chair at the University of Calgary’s Institute for
Biocomplexity and Informatics (IBI), this is exactly what Dr Stuart
Kauffman does.
The IBI conducts intense, coordinated, interdisciplinary research by
developing theories and companion experiments in the fields of genetic
and cell regulatory networks. In doing so, the full potentials of
understanding such networks can be realized for the benefit of science
and human health. Most importantly, the research program focuses on
cancer cell differentiation, with enormous potential application in
human health.
The IBI permits Dr Kauffman and his expanding research team to launch
unprecedented experimental work including high-throughput screening and
image analysis of cancer cell lines to seek novel drug targets. This
experimental work is taking place in concert with the theoretical,
mathematical, and computer simulation by physicists, biologists,
medical doctors, mathematicians, and theorists who are developing
useful experimental approaches and techniques, new algorithms, models,
and exploration methods.
Science policy networking continues as a major outreach thrust of the
IBI, with ongoing work at local, provincial, national, and
international levels, and has resulted in increased awareness and
collaborative potential of the significance to understanding the
relationship between the emerging “new science on the ground”, and the
shaping of long-term science policy that support and help new science
develop.
Biographical Information
Dr Stuart Kauffman is a professor at the University of Calgary with a
shared appointment between biological sciences and physics and
astronomy. He is an emeritus professor of biochemistry at the
University of Pennsylvania, a MacArthur Fellow, and an external
professor at the Santa Fe Institute.
Originally a medical doctor, Dr Kauffman's primary work has been as a
theoretical biologist studying the origin of life and molecular
organization. Dr Kauffman was the founding general partner and chief
scientific officer of The Bios Group, a company (acquired in 2003 by
NuTech Solutions) that applies the science of complexity to business
management problems. He is the developer of the Kauffman models (random
networks exhibiting a kind of self-organization that he terms "order
for free"). He is the author of The Origins of Order, Investigations, and At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization.
Related Links:
Dr Stuart Kauffman’s Homepage
Institute for Biocomplexity and Informatics (IBI)
April 28, 2005
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