Bioinformatics Special Interest Group (BI SIG)
Bioinformatics is the area of
science concerned with the application of computational methods to problems in
biology, that include analysis, modeling and discovery from biological and
medical data (e.g. genetic, proteomic-, clinical). Bioinformatics is a symbiosis
of several areas of science: biological sciences and molecular biology in
particular, bio-chemistry, medicine, pharmacy, agriculture, food science and
technology, mathematics, physics, computer and information science,
engineering.
DNA encodes the basic blue print
of life. However it is not
known how to interpret most of this information. The volume of data produced in
bioinformatics increases exponentially with time and that requires powerful and
intelligent methods to deal with this vast amount of information.
To address this issue a
Bioinformatics Special Interest Group (BI SIG) is formed, based in Plovdiv,
Bulgaria, and hosted by the Technical University. This SIG is concerned with
the application of the methods of computational intelligence to the analysis,
modeling and knowledge discovery in bioinformatics and to the development of
new methods and systems for solving various challenging problems in the
specified area. The methods of informatics include artificial
intelligence, neural networks, fuzzy logic, evolutionary algorithms, methods
for data mining, statistical methods and chaos analysis, algebraic methods and
finite automata, and combination of them.
The BI SIG focus is to take advantage of the wealth of new information and develop new techniques and methodology for intelligent information analysis, knowledge management and knowledge discovery and rule-based reasoning in an environment that is imprecise, uncertain, complex and not known to our knowledge as of today. These tools include computational methods for the identification of functional elements in complex genomes and the identification of patterns in large datasets (for example, microarray data). The program also supports development of intelligent search engine and query engine with deductive capability and reasoning that can be widely shared among different databases in order to facilitate intelligent information retrieval from genomes databases and DNA sequences. These bioinformatics resources will allow the scientific community efficient access to genomic data, which will enable new types of analyses for the computer modeling and experimental validation of the complex genome networks that ultimately determine the causes of many human diseases. We believe that the information and knowledge extracted from such system-wide analyses using the computational intelligence will fundamentally alter the way of our life.
The BI SIG is aiming at
integrating efforts of biologists and computer scientists, graduate students
and practitioners, who are interested in making progress both in terms of
solving practical problems in bioinformatics and improving the existing
computational techniques.
The BI SIG will organise
seminars, both in Plovdiv and in other cities of Bulgaria, to discuss the state
of art papers in the area, new research results, and opportunities for joint
projects between Universities and industrial partners in Bulgaria and
abroad.