Dr. Sean Warnick to Research at Cambridge University

May 1, 2006

This summer Dr. Sean Warnick will accept an appointment to conduct research as a Visiting Professor at Cambridge University. Warnick’s research focuses on the role of simplified models for complex systems, including retail, financial markets, manufacturing processes, ecological systems, and various networks. “Since computing the consequences of possible decisions can be intractable for such systems, simplified models are needed to understand consequences well enough to make good decisions,” explains Warnick. This interdisciplinary approach motivated Cambridge professor Jorge Goncalves to invite Warnick to exchange ideas on fundamental methods.

Dr. Goncalves and his group at Cambridge University have been working on understanding complex regulatory networks relating gene expression, DNA transcription, RNA translation, and post-translational modifications of proteins for certain biological systems. Warnick and Goncalves have followed each other’s research ever since they first met at MIT, and they have recently both been drawn to the importance of general computational methods for simplifying complex systems.

Warnick believes the insights he has gained from his collaborators at BYU, including Dr. Buskirk in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Dr. Humpherys in the Mathematics Department, Dr. Tolley in the Statistics Department, Dr. Dallin Durfee in the Physics Department, and Drs. Giraud-Carrier, Jones, and Seppi in the Computer Science Department, will be pivotal in his work at Cambridge.

At BYU, Drs. Warnick and Humpherys founded and direct the interdisciplinary Information and Decision Algorithm Laboratories (IDeA Labs: see idealabs.byu.edu) as a network of application-specific laboratories that all draw from a common core of computational mathematics to study complex systems.

“Each lab has a unique focus that draws collaborators from all over the university and supporters from a variety of industries,” says Warnick. “Nevertheless, by working at the intersection of these applications in a single research group, students begin to comprehend the common thread of information processing that unites all of these areas; students begin to see the general power of computational science.”

Warnick’s visit to Cambridge, sponsored in part by the Rollins Center for eBusiness, the Sorensen Molecular Genealogy Foundation, ATK Thiokol, and the U.S. Department of the Interior, in addition to support from BYU and Cambridge University, is expected to lay the foundation for a long term collaboration between the research groups at each university.

“It is the generosity of our Industrial Partners and my colleagues in the Computer Science Department who have encouraged the diversity I bring to the group that make this kind of work possible,” says Warnick. “great Computer Science Department, and a great University.”