The G. S. Watson Annual Lecture, 2000
Professor Terry Speed
Title: "Mathematics Meets Molecular Biology"
Presenter: Professor Terry Speed, The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne, and Department of Statistics, University of California, Berkeley
Date: Thursday, 3 August 2000, 4pm to 5pm, McKay Lecture Theatre, La Trobe University, Bendigo
Abstract: Many people go into mathematics because they don't like or aren't good at lab science, and many people go into lab science because they don't like or aren't good at mathematics. It has come as a shock to people in both fields to find that there are deep and significant links between molecular biology and mathematics, and that for some, these cannot be ignored. This is particularly so for biologists who find that they should now master a range of mathematical concepts that underpin computer programs they need to use to do their jobs as biologists. While mathematicians have no similar incentive to understand molecular biology, and the way in which mathematics is used there, as with any important application area, they ignore it at their peril. In this lecture Professor Speed will outline some of the mathematical ideas being used to address important issues in molecular biology. Random walks, knots, dynamic programming, finite state machines, and some other topics may be mentioned in the context of molecular biology.
About the Presenter: Terry Speed shares with the late Geoffrey Watson a love of seeing mathematical ideas applied in biology. He grew up in Melbourne, attending the University High School there and later the University of Melbourne. After starting off there doing a joint science and medicine degree with a view to going into medical research, he found dissecting mice and looking down a microscope much less attractive than mathematics, and so changed plans for 30 years. Accordingly, he did a joint statistics and mathematics BSc. Following a PhD at Monash University in mathematics (algebra) he moved back to probability and statistics, and he stayed in this field until about 1988, when he resumed his interest in applying mathematics and statistics to genetics and biology more generally. He has worked at the University of Sheffield in the UK, at the University of Western Australia, with the CSIRO in Canberra, and moved to the University of California at Berkeley in 1987. In the US he is a member of the broadly-based Program for Mathematics and Molecular Biology. Since 1997 he has been 50% at Berkeley and 50% at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, where he is building up a research group in bioinformatics.