Professor Patrice Koehl

Department of Computer Science
3059 Kemper Hall

Genome Center at University of California, Davis
4337 Genome Center, Genome and Biomedical Sciences Facility (GBSF)

University of California
Davis, CA 95616

Professor Koehl’s personal home page

Email: koehl at cs.ucdavis.edu
Phone: (530) 754 5121

The ongoing transformation of biology to a quantitative discipline raises as many opportunities as challenges. The many -omics projects (genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, to only name a few) allow us to map and identify all components of a living cell at the molecular level, from both a physical and functional standpoint. New technologies such as high resolution time-lapse microscopy and micro-scale devices have vastly enhanced our abilities to study the mechanics of biomolecules, cells, and tissues, giving us hope that we will be able to unravel the fundamentals of life. In addition to these technological advances, computational methods are playing an ever growing role in biology. As physical models improve and greater computational power becomes available, simulation of complex biological processes will become increasingly tractable. The challenges however come in analyzing and interpreting the vast amount of data generated from these disciplines. We need new methods for extracting knowledge from data, as well as new simulation methods that allow us to implement this knowledge into holistic models that will enable understanding. This needs have been the major drive in my scientific career.