IEEE SMC Society eNewsletter

1. Committee Co-Chairs

Professor Michael R. Berthold
Dept of Computer and Information Science, Konstanz University, Fach M712, 78457 Konstanz, Germany
E-mail: Michael.Berthol@uni-konstanz.de

Professor Hong Yan
Dept of Electronic Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong
E-mail: h.yan@cityu.edu.hk

Professor Daniel Yeung
Dept of Computing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hom Hum, Kowloon, Hong Kong
E-mail: csdaniel@inet.polyu.edu.hk

2. Background

Computational life science is a relatively new and rapidly thriving research field. It has attracted enormous interests from many biochemists, biologists, computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians, statisticians as well as medical researchers in recent years. Many people believe that the 21st century will be the century of life science, following the successful century of physical science in the 20th century. Most leading universities and computer, bio-tech and pharmaceutical companies have invested heavily in this area. Modern information processing technologies can provide science and engineering researchers with efficient and powerful tools to study many important problems, which otherwise would require highly expensive and time-consuming experimental work.

Many researchers from traditional SMC areas, such as control and system theories, learning algorithms, neural nets and fuzzy logic, signal processing, image processing and pattern recognition, are now working on computational life science related problems. This technical committee will group the researchers together, foster collaborations among different fields and different countries, and attract more people to work in this emerging field.

3. Aims and Objectives

This aims and objective of the Computational Life Science Technical Committee are:

To establish synergy among researchers from biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, physics, mathematics, medicine and statistics to work on difficult problems in computational life science, including

Modeling, simulation and data visualization in biology, chemistry and medicine

Genomic and proteomic data analysis

Biomedical signal and image processing and analysis

Feedback control and network analysis in biology and chemistry

Neural networks and fuzzy systems with life science applications

Data mining, genetic and learning algorithms with life science applications

Computer-aided medical diagnosis and drug design

Molecular data analysis and new compound synthetic success prediction

Biomedical software development, database management and computer architecture

To organize workshops and special sessions or tracks at SMC sponsored conferences and publish special issues or sections in SMC publications.

To promote research activities among SMC members in cutting-edge emerging areas related to computational life science and to attract more members to join SMC and our activities.

To foster close collaborations among academic researchers, biomedical professionals and computer and bi-technology industries.

To provide opportunities for researchers, including graduate students, to exchange their ideas and present their research results.

4. Current Activities

Organizing a Symposium on Computational Life Science (CompLife2005) to be held in September 2005 in Konstanz, Germany. Website: http://www.complife.org. Authors of selected papers will be invited to submit extended versions to SMC-B (or C where appropriate).

Organizing a Special Session on Bioinformatics at ICMLC2005 to be held in August 2005 in Guangzhou, China. Website: http://www4.comp.polyu.edu.hk/~cike/icmlc2005.

A tutorial has been prepared for ICMLC2005.

Working with the Hong Kong SMC Chapter to organize the 2005 Asia Pacific Workshop on Visual Information Processing to be held in December 2005 in Hong Kong.

5. Future Activities

Establish a website for discussions and exchange of research information

Edit a special issue on computational life science for IEEE Transactions on SMC, Part B or C.

Organize special sessions at annual SMC conference and ICMLC in 2006.

Prepare a tutorial at annual SMC conference in 2006.

Plan a competition on biological data analysis.