Friday, 16 April 2010

PhD Control of biological regulatory systems: methods, design, and implementation at INRIA Sophia-Antipolis, France

The thesis will be with the COMORE team, INRIA Sophia-Antipolis. It will address

the problem of controlling the class of systems of piecewise affine differential 
equations, under biologically appropriate restrictions. Piecewise affine (PWA) 
differential systems constitute an intuitive theoretical framework for the study 
of genetic regulatory networks, as they are based on a qualitative description 
of the systems that can be easily compared with the experimental data obtained 
from gene and protein expression. In general, the parameters of PWA systems 
represent synthesis and degradation rates of the molecular components of the 
biological network, and the solutions represent the evolution of the system in 
"rectangles" in the state space with well defined dynamical properties. The 
"inputs" will be some of the synthesis and/or degradation rates, and possible 
control functions will be in the form of piecewise constant inputs to the system 
(constant in time intervals or in regions of space), and ranging in a qualitative 
scale. In a more advanced stage, control laws that depend on the variables of the
system or dynamic feedback laws will also be explored.

Control problems can be related to generating invariant regions, stabilization to
a given steady state, generating periodic solutions. The project will study these 
control problems for small circuits (motifs such as simple positive and negative 
loops, feedforward loops) and then investigate the insertion of each motif and 
its control method into a larger network. The methods developed will be applied 
to the genetic network that regulates growth in E. coli (collaboration with IBIS team).

Requirements: We are looking for an applied mathematician (master level) , or 
computer scientist, with a background in analysis of dynamical systems, and 
preferably familiar with hybrid systems theory and/or control theory. In addition, 
we expect a strong motivation to work on applications in genomics.

Contact: JL Gouzé, INRIA COMORE, gouze@sophia.inria.fr

Initial gross income is 1947,80 euros / month. Knowledge of French is not requested.
Application deadline is May 4th, 2010. Additional information and application can
be found at http://www.inria.fr/travailler/opportunites/doc.en.html
 

Please give the reference of CareerSetup in your application when applying for this opportunity! 

Subscribe for more updates

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner



 
Copyright © 2009 CareerSetup Inc. All rights reserved