Distributed Biological Algorithms (DBA)

Biologists are is seeking for rigorous tools to understand complex, interactive, and dynamic biological ensembles. The past decade has been very fruitful in terms of applying techniques from physics to study biological systems. The DBA project (May 2015 - April 2021) suggests that a holistic approach to biology can also be based on algorithmic considerations. We view biological ensembles as composed of probabilistic agents that aim to solve certain tasks. Our approach is, first, to translate a biological process of interest into a formal algorithmic model and then mathematically analyze it aiming to gain fundamental understandings regarding the behavior of the ensemble. Ultimately, these understandings would be combined with actual experiments in biology for the purpose of obtaining biological insights.

We concentrate our experimental studies on several selected biological systems, including ant colonies and bat groups. The studied tasks include search, foraging, and opinion formation problems, such as consensus and rumor spreading. Analyzing biological settings, we focus our attention on the following objectives: (1) identify the algorithmic challenges and the inherent limitations that a biological system faces, (2) establish quantitative connections between parameters (e.g., communication, memory, and time complexities), (3) analyze biological processes and evaluate performances using algorithmic measures, and (4) provide algorithmically-based predictions on the animal behavior, and verify them empirically by designing suitable experiments.

We are currently seeking for outstanding PhD students and Postdocs.