Where academic tradition
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TUCS Distinguished Lecture

Friday, June 12, 2015 at 10.15

ICT Building, Auditorium Beta

Click here for the video on Youtube.

Gheorghe Paun, Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy, Romania: "Looking for Computers in the Biological Cell. After Twenty Years"

Host: Ion Petre, Åbo Akademi University and Turku Centre for Computer Science

Abstract: A glimpse on natural computing is carried out, with an autobiographical eye, hence with some details about DNA computing and membrane computing. Besides (types of) problems and results (applications included), some research directions are mentioned which need further efforts. Then the question is raised whether or not "we dream too much" in this area, of bio-inspired computing. Some "impossibility theorems" as those of R. Gandhy and M. Conrad are mentioned.

CV: Gheorghe Paun is a researcher in the Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy, Bucharest. Interested in formal language theory, automata theory, mathematical linguistics, DNA computing, and membrane computing. Long research stages in Germany, Finland, The Netherlands, Canada, Spain, Japan, many visits in universities from other countries (over 100 collaborators from all these countries). Several of his books, written alone or in collaboration, became standard references, e.g., in regulated rewriting, Marcus contextual grammars, grammar systems, DNA computing, membrane computing. This last research area was initiated by him, in 1998, see TUCS Technical Report No. 208, November 1998, www.tucs.fi) and it was soon considered by ISI as a "fast emerging research area of computer science". A comprehensive coverage of the domain is "The Oxford Handbook of Membrane Computing", 2010, edited by Gh. Paun, G. Rozenberg, A. Salomaa.

Gheorghe Paun is a member of the Romanian Academy and of Academia Europaea.

The TUCS Distinguished Lecture Series is a forum for public lectures by outstanding national and international researchers in all aspects of computing, coming both from academia and industry. All lectures are free and open to the public.

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