Visiting Scholar to give talk on 'Fundamental Mathematical Laws of Biology'

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Contact:
Jennifer Custodio, (808) 956-8391
Education Specialist, Honors Program
Posted: Sep 14, 2012

Michael Deem
Michael Deem
The Alpha of Hawaii Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and the UH Manoa Honors Program announce a free public lecture by esteemed Visiting Scholar Dr. Michael W. Deem. His talk, “In Search of the Fundamental Mathematical Laws of Biology,” is at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, September 19, in BusAd A101 at the Shidler College of Business.
 
Deem is the John W. Cox Professor in Bioengineering and Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University. He will describe his participation over the past few years in an e­ffort to find fundamental mathematical laws in biology and theory for understanding the emergence of multi-scale, hierarchical structure in biology.
 
He will describe how modular structure in proteins, genetics and biological networks may arise and how it can be understood. He will also show the implications of the theory for engineering design, and will discuss additional examples of structure formation in ecological food networks, developmental pathways, physiology and social networks.
 
The Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program makes available each year a dozen or so distinguished scholars, who will visit colleges and universities with chapters of Phi Beta Kappa. They spend two days on each campus, meeting informally with students and faculty members, taking part in classroom discussions, and giving a public lecture open to the entire academic community.
 
The purpose of the program is to contribute to the intellectual life of the institution by making possible an exchange of ideas between the Visiting Scholars and the resident faculty and students.
Now entering its 57th year, the Visiting Scholar Program has sent 600 Scholars on 4,917 two-day visits since it was established in 1956.