Paper Info
Title
Immune system computation and the immunological homunculus
Abstract
Students for the Master of Science degree at the Weizmann Institute of Science are obliged to spend the first year of the two-year program doing three-month rotations through three different laboratories in any of the various faculties at the Institute. In 1998, Na'aman Kam rotated through my laboratory in the Department of Immunology where he did molecular modeling of an antibody (1). His next rotation, he told me, would be with David Harel in the Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics. When you get there, said I, tell David Harel about the immune system and ask him two questions: Is the immune system a computer? If a computer scientist would set out to build a computer capable of doing what the immune system does, what kind of computer would it have to be? Connecting Computer and Biological Sciences The questions (or to be more accurate, the student who transmitted them) led to a continuing collaboration with David Harel catalyzed by joint Master's, Doctoral and Post-doctoral students who have worked to combine computer science and biological systems: After Na'aman Kam came Sol Efroni (2-4), Naamah Swerdlin (5), Yaki Setty, Hila Amir-Kroll, and Avital Sadot. Students can be a boon to inter-disciplinary research because, being unencumbered by expertise, they fearlessly lead (or carry) their supervisors into unfamiliar territories.
Year
DOI
Venue
2006
10.1007/11880240_35
MoDELS
Keywords
Field
DocType
immune system computation,immunological homunculus,joint master,aman kam,immune system,computer science,david harel,biological system,science degree,weizmann institute,connecting computer,computer scientist,uml,metamodeling,biological systems,molecular modeling
Systems engineering,Homunculus,Engineering,Software development
Conference
Volume
ISSN
ISBN
4199
0302-9743
3-540-45772-0
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
6
0.54
3
Authors
1
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Irun R. Cohen129621.62