PhD student wins award at International Conference on Systems Biology

Tom Gorochowski

Evolved networks used to understand the structural characteristics favourable for synchronisation

19 October 2010

Tom Gorochowski, a PhD student at the Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences, has been commended for his work at the world’s leading systems biology conference.

Tom’s poster, illustrating a computational toolkit for investigating network dynamics and evolution, was selected as the best in its category in the Computational Methods and Tools Session at the International Conference on Systems Biology.

Tom is a PhD student at the Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences. His work focuses on understanding the dynamic and networked structure of complex systems, and how this evolves over time. This has resulted in the development of several computational tools such as Net Evo presented in the poster.

With dynamics and evolution integral to many biological systems, these tools can be used to model and analyse a wide range of behaviours; from the dynamics of protein interaction networks to the evolution of gene regulation, or even the coordinated behaviour of social animals.

Professor Claire Grierson from the School of Biological Sciences, joint supervisor of Tom’s PhD with Professor Mario di Bernardo in Engineering Mathematics, said: “I am absolutely delighted that Tom’s work has been recognised in this way. It is very exciting to see these new computational tools welcomed by the systems biology community.”