*************************************************** CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ( Apologies for multiple postings )
** CMSB04 ** Second International Workshop on Computational Methods in Systems Biology 2004
May 26 - 28, 2004
Hotel Meridien Montparnasse, Paris, France
Organized by Genoscope, Evry – Genopole, Evry – CNRS – University of Paris VII – BioPathways Consortium
Conference website: http://www.biopathways.org/CMSB04/
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******* CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION ********
The complexity of signalling, regulatory and metabolic processes taking place within a cell have motivated a series of attempts at modelling these processes to facilitate system description and help simulate or analyze their dynamic behaviour. These attempts have spanned a large spectrum of formalisms, from discrete to continuous, from systems of deterministic or stochastic differential equations to process algebra, Petri-nets, Boolean networks, logical formalisms, state-charts, rewriting systems, constraint programming languages or hybrid automata. Simultaneously, the view of cellular mechanisms as computational processes has been gaining acceptance, not only for its relevance as a metaphor, but also because of the added explanatory value of concepts such as syntax vs semantics, abstraction, the relationship between a specification and an implementation, and of the promised analytical power of formal tools such as verification techniques or model-checking.
As the field matures, it is becoming increasingly obvious that there is probably no 'one-size fits all' formal language for molecular biology, but rather several modelling paradigms, each with its strengths and weaknesses relatively to specific analytical goals. Theoretical arguments supporting one representation over others or actual biological analyses conducted using a formal language and associated formal methods are still lacking. Also, while a model of a biological system should ideally have explanatory or predictive value, and could have applications in understanding the causes of genetic diseases or developing new drugs, most modelling attempts are still far from this degree of maturity.
The CMSB (Computational Methods in Systems Biology) conference series was established in 2003 to help catalyze the convergence between modellers – theoretical computer scientists from fields such as language design, concurrency theory or program verification, as well as physicists and mathematicians, – and biologists interested in a systems-level understanding of cellular processes.
Among the conference topics: - Formal models for regulatory, signalling or metabolic networks - Formal methods to analyse biomolecular systems - Qualitative or quantitative analyses of biomolecular systems - Theoretical comparisons between different formal models of cellular processes - Applications of formal techniques to reverse-engineering of biological networks - Detailed case-studies on how a biological question was successfully addressed using formal models - Definition and study of theoretical properties of biologically-inspired formal languages
**** The list of accepted papers is available on the website. ****
********** KEYNOTE SPEAKERS ***********
Trey Ideker, University of California, San Diego, USA Rene Thomas, Free University of Brussels, Belgium Alfonso Valencia, CNB-CSIC, Madrid, Spain
********** PROGRAMME COMMITTEE ***********
Gilles Bernot, University of Evry, France Alexander Bockmayr, Henri Poincare University, Nancy, France Luca Cardelli, Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK Vincent Danos (co-chair), University of Paris, France François Fages, INRIA Rocquencourt, France Walter Fontana, Santa Fe Institute, USA François Kepes, CNRS / Epigenomics Program, Evry, France Kurt Kohn, National Cancer Institute, NIH, US Marta Kwiatkowska, University of Birmingham, UK Nicolas Le Novère, European Bioinformatics Institute, UK Pat Lincoln, Stanford Research International, US Satoru Miyano, University of Tokyo, Italy Eric Neumann, Beyond Genomics, Cambridge, US Bernard Palsson, UCSD, US Gordon Plotkin, University of Edinburgh, UK Corrado Priami, University of Trento, Italy Aviv Regev, Harvard University, US Vijay Saraswat, IBM TJ Watson Research Center, US Vincent Schachter (co-chair), Genoscope, France Birgit Schoeberl, MIT, US Adelinde Uhrmacher, University of Rostock, Germany Alfonso Valencia, CNB-CSIC, Spain
************* ACCOMMODATION *************
Conference attendees are responsible for booking their own accommodation. A block of rooms has been reserved at the conference venue (Hotel Meridien) at a discounted price. A selection of alternative hotels is available on the conference website.
************** REGISTRATION ****************
Online registration is now open at http://www.biopathways.org/CMSB04 We advise you to register before the end of April, as attendance to the workshop is limited.
****** CONFERENCE ORGANISATION ******
Monique Meugnier and Catherine Sarlande Genoscope CMSB04 Conference Organisation email: cmsb04@genoscope.cns.fr
************************************************** Please forward this email to potentially interested parties. -- http://www.biopathways.org/CMSB04/