People
The IBI has now grown to include several faculty members, research associates, and post doctoral fellows. Please follow the links at left to learn more about each member's research interests.
IBI Faculty
Stuart Kauffman, iCore Visiting Professor, IBI Founding Director
Dennis R. Salahub, Senior Fellow of IBI/Professor
Sui Huang, Associate Professor
Sergei Noskov, Assistant Professor
Gordon Chua, Assistant Professor
Dr. Peter Tieleman, Professor
Stuart Kauffman, FRSC
iCore Visting Professor, IBI Founding Director (2004-2009) skauffman<AT>ucalgary.ca
403.220.2425
Research Interest
Stuart Kauffman’s group
- Development of an inference algorithm, IADGRIN, to infer the structure and logic of noisy Boolean networks – papers published.
- Foundational work on the linkages among work, constraint, information, in the propagating organization occurring in cells in the biosphere – papers published.
- Initial investigations on the relation between maximizing mutual information in Boolean networks and the dynamical criticality of such networks – multiple papers published.
- Developed early plans on extending IADGRIN to chemical master equation (Gillespie) network models of genetic regulatory networks
- Construction and implementation of Gillespie networks and study of bi-stable toggle switches and the three gene “represselator”
- Formulation of a general ensemble approach to use Gillespie nets to model genetic regulatory nets and construction of initial models – papers published.
- With Dr. Sui Huang of the IBI, Cancer differentiation therapy, the experimental effort to induce cancer cells to change to normal non dividing cells for theraputic purposes.
Dr. Kauffman moved to Calgary, Alberta in 2004 after being appointed director of the IBI and professor to the departments of Biological Sciences and Physics and Astronomy in the U of C’s Faculty of Science. Shortly after, in May 2005, he was named an iCore Chair in Biocomplexity and Informatics (iCore, or Informatics Circle of Research Excellence, is a program established by the Government of Alberta to foster world-class, university-based research).
Originally a medical doctor, Kauffman is an emeritus professor of biochemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, and a seminal member and an external professor of the Santa Fe Institute. Also a MacArthur Fellow and a Trotter Prize winner, Kauffman has published four major books; Origins of Order (1993), At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (1995) ,Investigations (2000), all Oxfod University Press, and Reinventing the Sacred (2008), Basic Books.
Current documents of interest:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7 National Public Radio, (NPR, USA), Website title: 13.7 Cosmos and Culture. NPR.ORG/blogs/13.7 is operational and has Dr. Stuart Kauffman's posts.
StuartKauffman.com: With respect to previous postings on this site, I am attempting to obtain personal control of the website bearing my name. For now, my postings will be on NPR.ORG/blogs/13.7 .
My recollection is that the famous science fiction writer, Ray Bradbury, once explained why he did not follow the news, (paraphrased): It either tells me about a murder I did not commit, a fire I did not start, or an accident I wasn't in. And it tells me nothing about the future.
Recent information some of you may have heard about me from previous postings by others on StuartKauffman.com is an accident I was not in. What is important is the future of a co-evolving ecology of people and civilizations learning to live together on our one globe.
Video talk for a conference in Doha, Qatar,30 May 2008
Reinventing the sacred - Presidential talk at the University of Vermont.
"Economic webs; Anew approach to Economic growth theory" - A talk by Dr. Kauffman to Canadian International Development Agency - October 8th 2009. Dr. Kauffman's talk at CIDA
Tillich Lecture - The Memorial Church of Harvard University
Stuart Kauffman’s new book short-listed for inaugural Warwick Prize
Two Deep Issues In Evolutionary Theory
Published in The New York Academy of Sciences
Salon Article
Reinventing the Sacred is Amazon.ca # 6 Best Seller
Reinventing the Sacred - Preface in Spanish - translated by Ivan Dario Gomez Castano
Reinventing the Sacred - Chapter 1 in Spanish - translated by Ivan Dario Gomez Castano
Can Science Help Solve The Economic Crisis?
Lecture at Duke University - The Open Universe
The Open Universe: Steps Toward a Research Program
The Evolving Web of Future Wealth
Edge Foundation
Breaking the Galilean Spell
Beyond Reductionism: Reinventing the Sacred
Gene expression dynamics in the macrophage exhibit criticality
Comments on presentation at World Science Forum
(http://hsm-science.blogspot.com/2006/11/stuart-kauffmanscientific.html)
PhD dissertation of former student Thom LaBean (now at Duke University)
Beyond Reductionism: Reinventing the Sacred
Dr. Kauffman's new manuscript has recently been accepted for publication by Edge Inc.
I would like to begin a discussion about the first glimmerings of a new scientific world view — beyond reductionism to emergence and radical creativity in the biosphere and human world. This emerging view finds a natural scientific place for value and ethics, and places us as co-creators of the enormous web of emerging complexity that is the evolving biosphere and human economics and culture. In this scientific world view, we can ask: Is it more astonishing that a God created all that exists in six days, or that the natural processes of the creative universe have yielded galaxies, chemistry, life, agency, meaning, value, consciousness, culture without a Creator. In my mind and heart, the overwhelming answer is that the truth as best we know it, that all arose with no Creator agent, all on its wondrous own, is so awesome and stunning that it is God enough for me and I hope much of humankind.
An extended description of "Beyond Reductionism: Reinventing the Sacred" is available here.
Dennis Salahub Ph.D., FRSC, FAAAS
Professor of Chemistry
Director, IBI
Senior Fellow, Institute for Sustainable Energy,
Environment and Economy
dsalahub<AT>ucalgary.ca
403.220.2425
DFT 2011, Athens, Greece - Lecture by Dr. Salahub
Sui Huang
Associate Professor, IBI and Dept. of Biollogical Sciences
sui.huang<AT>ucalgary.ca
403.210.7858
See also:
http://www.bio.ucalgary.ca/contact/faculty/huang.html
http://www.childrenshospital.org/research/huanglab/
“Systems Biology of Multicellularity in Health and Disease”
- Stem cell biology: Multipotency, cell fate decision and differentiation, cell fate control by genomic regulatory networks and molecular noise (non-genetic heterogeneity)
- Cancer biology: dynamics of cancer stem cells, population heterogeneity, differentiation therapy;
- Theory: Statistical physics and dynamics of multicellualr development (diversification and directionality)
- Approaches: cell and molecular biology, genomics, dynamical systems, bioinformatics, computer models
Sergei Noskov
Assistant Professor
IBI and Department of Biological Sciences
snoskov<AT>ucalgary.ca
403.210.7971
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~snoskov/
Gordon Chua
Assistant Professor, IBI and Department of Biology
gchua [at] ucalgary [dot] ca
403.220.2425
http://www.bio.ucalgary.ca/contact/faculty/chua.html
- Transcriptional Regulatory Networks and Epistasis in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe
- Application of algae in biodiesel production and naphthenic acid bioremediation.
Dr. Peter Tieleman
Professor, IBI and Department of Biology
IBI alumini and past visitors
- Robert Este, Director of Operations (2004-2009)
Bob Este is founding Director of Operations of the IBI. He worked directly with Stuart Kauffman on all aspects of IBI policy, strategic planning and inter- and intra-institutional liaison. Together, they also collaborate on developmental support for the IBI’s theoretical and experimental work. Bob is a PhD candidate in the Graduate Division of Educational Research and Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Calgary. His dissertation examines the architectures of innovation, especially enhancement of organizational innovation capacity with regard to the emergence of long-term science policy. One of Bob's additional research interests is the enhancement of conceptual skills in relation to technological innovation and societal change.
We are pleased to have hosted several international visiting scholars over the course of the past year.
- Dr. Peter Grassberger visited for three weeks in March 2006. He is one of the world’s pre-eminent physicists and has now to returned to Calgary as a two-year iCORE Visiting Professor with U of C’s IBI and its new Complexity Studies Centre in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.
- Dr. Bjorn Samuellson and Dr. Josh Socolar, both of Duke University, spent June 2006 working full-time with the IBI Team. Samuellson and Socolar attended the inaugural IBI conference in August 2005 and collaborate extensively with Dr. Kauffman, the U of Calgary team, and other members of the IBI’s “virtual institute” around the world.
- Dr. John Grefenstette from George Mason University will work full-time with the IBI Team from September 2006 to December 2006. Grefenstette attended the inaugural IBI conference in August 2005 and collaborates extensively with Dr. Kauffman and other members of the IBI’s “virtual institute” around the world.
- Juha Kesseli, Tiina Manninen, and Antti Lehmussola visited from the Compututational Systems Biology Group at the Signal Processing Insitute, Tampere University of Technology, Finland, to further our collaboration with TUT.