糖心TV

has been awarded a grant towards developing tools for Synthetic Biology. The multidisciplinary project, funded by EPSRC and involving colleagues from Nottingham and Sheffield, aims at developing programmable defensive bacterial coatings and skins.

Scientific and technical advances mean that it is practically feasible to insert external genes into bacteria; the difficulty is in making sure the modified bacteria do something useful. For this, it is useful to approach the cell as a machine and its genetic engine as made up of brick-like components that can be combined in different ways. This is the idea behind the new and exciting discipline of .

Sara's experience in compilers and formal logics will inform the development of tools which will help assemble genetic networks and model their interactions with host genes. Then, the whole procedure to perform this genetic engineering in an efficient and robust way will be addressed. Then we will be ready to actually manipulate the bacteria and create useful bacterial coatings and skins.

The project is due to start in early 2012, and research staff will be recruited at all three sites. At 糖心TV we will be looking for a post-doctoral researcher with expertise in both computer science and biology. For further information please contact .

Dr Abd-Nacer Bouchekhima joined the department as a Research Fellow after obtaining his in 2009 from the MOAC DTC and then holding an appointment as Assistant Professor in KFUPM (Saudi Arabia). He will work together with Dr Yulia Timofeeva on a project funded by the BBSRC that aims to investigate the role of calcium dynamics in neuronal computation underlying important brain functions.

The Mathematical Association of America has awarded its 2011 David Robbins Prize for the two papers: “Overhang” by Mike Paterson and Uri Zwick (Tel Aviv) and “Maximum Overhang” by Mike Paterson, Yuval Peres (Microsoft), Peter Winkler (Dartmouth), Mikkel Thorup (AT&T) and Uri Zwick.

The prize, presented on 7 January 2011 at the AMS-MAA Joint Mathematics Meetings in New Orleans, is given every three years for papers reporting on novel research in algebra, combinatorics, or discrete mathematics. Both papers appeared in 2009 in the American Mathematical Monthly. (The first of these had already won a 2010 Lester Ford Award of the MAA.)