Science at the Shine Dome 2010
Symposium: Genomics and mathematics
Friday, 7 May 2009
Professor Steven Evans
Steven Evans was born and grew up in Orange, NSW. He received a BSc in statistics with a University Medal from the University of Sydney in 1983 and a PhD in mathematics from the University of Cambridge in 1986. After a stint working for the Commonwealth Bank and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Virginia, he joined the University of California, Berkeley in 1989 and now has positions there in statistics and mathematics as well as in the graduate group in computational and genomic biology and the graduate group in computational science and engineering.
Besides being the author of numerous publications in the general area of stochastic processes, with a particular emphasis on probability on algebraic and topological structures, Steven also conducts research into the applications of probability to questions in biology, particularly in the areas of population genetics, phylogenetics, metagenomics, population dynamics, and the modelling of ageing and mortality.
Steven is a recipient of the Rollo Davidson Prize, a Presidential Young Investigator Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship and the G. de B. Robinson Prize of the Canadian Mathematical Society.
Effects of network topology on the speed, synchrony and reliability of transcriptional regulation
Gene expression is controlled by a complex network of interacting macromolecules, some of which are present in very low copy number per cell. Its precision and reliability can therefore be affected considerably by molecular ‘noise’. A variety of mechanisms are used for regulating different genes, and some relatively simple mathematical ideas shed light on how these various mechanisms respond to such inherent randomness.
This work is joint with Alistair N. Boettiger, University of California, Berkeley, Biophysics and Molecular and Cellular Biology, and Peter L. Ralph, University of California, Davis, Evolution and Ecology.
