Computational Insights into the Social Life of Zebras (and other animals)

Guest:  Tanya Berger-Wolf, University of Illinois (Chicago)

Host:  Anne Condon

Contact: Holly Kwan (Tel: 604.822.3060)

Abstract:

Computation has fundamentally changed the way we study nature. Recent breakthroughs in data collection technology, such as GPS and other mobile sensors, high definition cameras, satellite images, and genotyping, are giving biologists access to data about wild populations, from genetic to social interactions, which are orders of magnitude richer than any previously collected. Such data offer the promise of answering some of the big questions in population biology: Why do animals form social groups and how do genetic ties affect this process? Which individuals are leaders and to what degree do they control the behavior of others? How do social interactions affect the survival of a species? Unfortunately, in this domain, our ability to analyze data lags substantially behind our ability to collect it. In this talk I will show how computational approaches can be part of every stage of the scientific process, from data collection (identifying individual zebras from photographs) to hypothesis formulation (by designing a novel computational framework for analysis of dynamic social networks). I will also show lots of pictures of exotic animals.

Bio: Dr. Tanya Berger-Wolf is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she heads the Computational Population Biology Lab. Her research interests are in applications of computational techniques to problems in population biology of plants, animals, and humans, from genetics to social interactions. Dr. Berger-Wolf has received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2002. She has spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of New Mexico working in computational phylogenetics and a year at the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS) doing research in computational epidemiology. She has received numerous awards for her research and mentoring, including the US National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2008 and the UIC Mentor of the Year Award in 2009.