Dr. DeBlasio will be teaching a course in Fall 2019 called “Algorithmic Foundations of Computational Biology” aimed at taking a survey of computational biology from a computer science point of view. We will be covering both classical results such as sequence alignment and Burroughs-Wheeler Transforms as well as emerging topics such as the use of minHash sketches, minimizers, and read-to-graph alignments at the cutting edge of the field.
The course numbers are CS4390/CS5390, meeting Tuesdays and Thursdays 4:30-5:50 in CCSB1.0204. No biological background will be needed.
Algorithmic Foundations of Computational Biology
This course provides an introduction the algorithms that are used to fuel the recent advances in computational biology research. While the applications of such algorithms are in biology, we will focus on the computational foundations, thus little biological background is necessary. The topics we cover will include both foundational algorithms as well as cutting edge methods including: sequence alignment, sequence database searching, genome assembly, phylogenetic tree construction, metagenomics, biological network analysis, and protein structure prediction. During the course students will have the opportunity to interact with the data sources that are common in the field. We will be using a combination of a textbook and primary literature, which will give students exposure to the current state of the art in computational biology.