Vassily Hatzimanikatis
Department of Chemical Engineering
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL
Current knowledge of biological systems is composed of a vast set of data that accumulate with an increasing rate. Advances in analytical methods and development of sophisticated techniques and instrumentation have provided the tools that allow us to know more than we can understand. However, it is well understood that living organisms are characterized by high complexity. This complexity increases from unicellular organisms to isolated tissue cells and multicellular structures, such as tissues and organs. The development of tools and frameworks that will organize the available biological knowledge and will help in the analysis, understanding, and redesign of biological systems is of immediate importance. A hierarchy of mathematical structures and computational approaches for utilizing experimental information to derive insights into cell function and for design of improved function will be presented. These approaches can be quantitative or qualitative and they can provide with predictive power or constructive guidance. The pros and cons of the different approaches will be set forth for discussion.