Speaker: Professor David Soloveichik, The University of Texas at Austin
Title: "Dynamical systems and chemical computers: all you need is DNA"
Abstract: The field of molecular programming aims to recapitulate complex molecular behaviors associated with life using bottom-up rational design of molecular components rather than evolution. In the first part of my talk, I will describe how a simple rationally designed DNA "gadget" can act as a logic gate, analog multiplier / integrator for dynamical systems, and a ReLU node for neural networks. In the second part, I will discuss more abstractly the computational power of chemical kinetics and the sources of that computational power: stoichiometry versus reaction rate.
Bio: David Soloveichik is an Associate Professor and holds the Temple Foundation Endowed Faculty Fellowship No.4 in the Chandra Family Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. Prior to joining Texas ECE, Dr. Soloveichik was a Fellow at the Center for Systems and Synthetic Biology at the University of California, San Francisco. He received his undergraduate and Masters degree from Harvard University in Computer Science. He completed his PhD degree in Computation and Neural Systems at the California Institute of Technology, where his dissertation was awarded the Milton and Francis Clauser Doctoral Prize for the best doctoral thesis. Dr. Soloveichik was the recipient of the Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology (Theory) from the Foresight Institute in 2012, the Tulip Award from the International Society for Nanoscale Science, Computation and Engineering in 2014, National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2016, and the Sloan Research Fellowship in 2020. His scientific area of interest is the engineering of complex molecular systems for nanotechnology and synthetic biology using bottom-up computer science and electrical engineering principles, as well as using formal models of computing to discover the potential and limits of chemical information processing.
Virtual Participation: Join Zoom
Meeting ID: 880 1818 5733
Passcode: 279596