Computer Science Seminar Series
Bioinformatics Tools Categorizer
3:00 p.m. Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Weir Hall, Room 235
Dr. Raphael Isokpehi
Abstract:
Bioinformatics could be defined as a scientific field that combines both the field of biology and computer science. Software tools for analysis of molecular biology data that are available on the Internet are extremely essential for conducting bioinformatics research [1]. Since 2003, the journal Nucleic Acid Research has successfully published issues dedicated to web-based software resources for analysis of molecular biology data [2]. Another journal called Bioinformatics has its main focus on new developments in genome bioinformatics and computational biology [2]. Furthermore the journal provides a forum for the exchange of information in the fields of computational molecular biology and post-genome bioinformatics, with emphasis on the documentation of new algorithms and databases that allows the progress of bioinformatics and biomedical research in a significant manner . The abstract of published reports in Bioinformatics include a section on the availability of the software tools. However, unlike the NAR web-server abstracts that have a Bioinformatics Links Directory [3], Bioinformatics does have a directory of software tools published in the journal. The Bioinformatics Tools Categorizer is a web-based resource that organizes the tools published in Bioinformatics and also assesses the persistence of the Universal Resource Locator (URL) associated with the tools. The Bioinformatics Tools Categorizer is available as of March 9, 2009 for all issues from 2005 to 2009 except for Conference Proceedings.
Dr. Isokpehi is an Associate Professor of Biology at Jackson State University, and Director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. After receiving his Ph.D. in Medical Microbiology from the University of Lagos, Nigeria in 2000, he has held Post Doctoral and Scholar positions at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA, the South African National Bioinformatics Institute, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart. His research interests include Bioinformatics, Genomics, Text Mining, Biological Data Integration, Construction and Analysis of Binary Matrices, Information Extraction and Retrieval, and Pathogen Biology.