Dr. Karp will deliver the Omega Rho Distinguished Plenary, "Sequencing the Genome."
- DATE: Tuesday, October 27
- TIME: 11:00 AM-12:00 PM
- PLACE: Grand Ballroom, Sheraton Hotel & Towers
Dr. Karp will be available for interview immediately after his lecture.
Sequencing - determining the order of a gene’s building blocks at the molecular level - has enormous importance for the Human Genome Project. Operations research techniques are now being applied to determining sequences, but with a twist: operations research is normally used to find an optimal solution to a problem; Dr. Karp is applying these techniques to determine the solution that nature has selected.
Biology as Information Science
In a 1996 interview, Dr. Karp told The New York Times, "There’s a revolution occurring in biology, particularly at the molecular level. It’s turning biology into an information science. Many biologists consider the acquisition of sequences to be boring. But from a computer science point of view, these are first-rate and challenging algorithmic questions."
Dr. Karp, a founder of the field of theoretical computer science, is a Professor of Computer Science & Engineering and Adjunct Professor of Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Washington. He was a 1996 recipient of the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest science award, which is presented annually at the White House. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
His long list of honors includes two bestowed by INFORMS’s predecessor organizations: the John von Neumann Theory Prize in 1990 and the Lanchester Prize in 1977.
The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is holding its semi-annual convention at Washington State Convention & Trade Center and The Sheraton Seattle Hotel & Towers from Sunday, October 25 to Wednesday, October 28. The theme is "Partnering for Global Technology Management."
The convention will include sessions on topics applied to numerous fields, including aviation, finance, health care, information technology, energy, transportation, manufacturing, marketing, and telecommunications. More than 1,600 papers are scheduled to be delivered. The convention’s general chairs are Marisa Altschul and Albert Maimon of Boeing.
For additional information on the conference, including a full list of workshops, visit the web site at http://www2.informs.org/Conf/Seattle98/
The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is an international scientific society with 12,000 members, including Nobel Prize laureates, dedicated to applying scientific methods to help improve decision-making, management, and operations. Members of INFORMS work primarily in business, government, and academia. They are represented in fields as diverse as airlines, health care, law enforcement, the military, the stock market, and telecommunications.