Lecture: Luis Rocha and Manuel Marque-Pita

You are invited to attend the following Networks and Complex Systems Talk.

April 20, 2009
6:00 p.m.
Wells Library 001

Luis Rocha and Manuel Marque-Pita, Indiana University, Bloomington will present, "Emergent Computation In Complex Network Dynamics."

Abstract:
Complex systems approaches to biological modeling often aim at the discovery of the "laws" of Biology. This endeavor entails a trade-off between generality and predictability. I argue that complex systems approaches, on their search for universal principles, have erred too much on the side of generality with very few examples of successful modeling of actual biological systems. In particular, we focus on the study of emergent computation in networks of automata. While there have been advances toward understanding the structure of natural networks, as well as some modeling of specific biological systems as networks of automata, it is still largely an open question how the dynamics of complex networks can lead to emergent, collective computation and how to control or "program" it to perform specific tasks. We discuss a new methodology based on Holland's schemata, for characterizing the dynamics of large automata networks, such as cellular automata and Boolean networks. We focus on examples from the systems biology literature, such as the segment polarity network of the Drosophila Melanogaster (21 nodes), and a large biochemical intracellular signal transduction network (139 nodes). We discuss how our approach is useful to characterize regulation, control, robustness, modularity and collective computation in networks of automata.