Internal Seminar: Femtosecond Spectroscopy Unit and Integrative Systems Biology Unit

Join us for this January's Internal Seminar Series, from 17:00 to 18:00 in B250, central building.

This month's seminars feature the Femtosecond Spectroscopy Unit (Keshav Dani) and Integrative Systems Biology Unit (Atiyo Ghosh).

Femtosecond Spectroscopy Unit (Dani Keshav)

Speaker: Prof. Dani Keshav

Title:  Femtosecond Spectroscopy and its applications: From Neuroscience to 2D Materials

Abstract Over the past year, the Femtosecond Spectroscopy Unit at OIST has developed novel tools in ultrafast and nonlinear optics with applications in a wide range of fields. I will briefly discuss some of the topics of study including neurotransmitter dynamics and two-dimensional heterostructures.

Integrative Systems Biology Unit (Tatiana Márquez-Lago)

Speaker: Dr. Atiyo Ghosh (joint work with T. Marquez-Lago and A. Leier (Integrative Systems Biology Unit))

Title: The Spatial Chemical Langevin and Reaction Diffusion Master Equations: Moments and Qualitative Solutions

Abstract: Applying genome sequencing technology to the Spatial stochastic effects are prevalent in many biological systems spanning a variety of scales, from intracellular (e.g. gene expression) to ecological (plankton aggregation). The most common ways of simulating such systems involve drawing sample paths from either the Reaction Diffusion Master Equation (RDME) or the Smoluchowski Equation, using methods such as Gillespie's Simulation Algorithm, Green's Function Reaction Dynamics and Single Particle Tracking. The simulation times of such techniques scale with the number of simulated particles, leading to much computational expense when considering large systems. The Spatial Chemical Langevin Equation (SCLE) can be simulated with fixed time intervals, independent of the number of particles, and can thus provide significant computational savings. However, very little work has been done to investigate the behavior of the SCLE. In this talk we summarize our findings on comparing the SCLE to the well-studied RDME. We use both analytical and numerical procedures to show when one should expect the moments of the SCLE to be close to the RDME, and also when they should differ.