This talk consists of two parts. The first part is an assembly algorithm
for the Human Genome Project data. I will describe an efficient
assembler, which is capable of detecting errors (such as chimeras,
fragment misassemblies and chromosome misassignments). Some of errors
detected were used by NCBI for correction of the working draft of the
human genome and some corrections were distributed to genome centers
around the world for follow-up. The second part of the talk addresses
the protein docking problem, which is the prediction of the structure
of protein-protein complexes from the structures of individual
proteins. In a step towards solving the problem, efficient rigid body
protein docking algorithms are sought. I will describe an efficient
local search heuristic for rigid protein docking.
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Vicky Choi is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department
of Computer Science and Biochemistry at Duke University. Her research
interest is algorithms in bioinformatics. She got her PhD in 2002 from the
Department of Computer Science at Rutgers University. Her PhD advisor was
Martin Farach-Colton. Vicky Choi received her MPhil degree in Computer
Science (under supervision of Mordecai J. Golin) from Hong Kong University
of Science & Technology in and BSc degree in Mathematics from the Chinese
University of Hong Kong.