Michael I. Jordan
University of California, Berkeley

TITLE:
Statistical Inference of Protein Structure and Function

ABSTRACT:

The study of the structure and function of proteins raises many problems that offer challenges and opportunities for computational and statistical research. I will overview my experiences in several such problem domains, ranging from domains where off-the-shelf ideas can be fruitfully applied to domains that require new thinking. These are: (1) the identification of active sites in enzymes; (2) the modeling of protein backbone configurations; (3) the prediction of molecular function based on phylogeny; (4) joint inference of alignment and phylogeny.

BIO:

Michael I. Jordan is the Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Department of Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley.

He was a professor at MIT from 1988 to 1998. His research in recent years has focused on Bayesian nonparametric analysis, graphical models and spectral methods, and applications to problems in signal processing, computational biology, and natural language processing. Prof. Jordan was named to the National Academy of Sciences in 2010 and the National Academy of Engineering in 2010.

He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Fellow of the IMS, the ACM, and the IEEE.

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jordan/

Light refreshments to follow