Monthly Archives: June 2010

Workshop in Computational Systems Biology

Earlier this week, I was at the Workshop in Computational Systems Biology: Models, Methods, Meaning at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in As, Norway. I gave a talk there on reproducible research, and there were some other excellent talks on modeling and simulation, research methods, etc. I liked it a lot, and it was really an excellent workshop! Thanks for the organization, Hans Ekkehard!

As it says on the site, this workshop was on the following topic, which very well described to me both the content and the spirit of the workshop: “Modeling and simulation are essential tools in systems biology and many other branches of science. This workshop is an invitation to step back from the day-to-day struggle with our simulations and to reflect about the nature of modeling and its relation to simulation: How do modeling and simulation contribute to the development of knowledge? Is a simulation per se a valid scientific experiment?”

Both the speakers and the audience consisted of people with a very diverse background, ranging from physicists, chemists and engineers (like me) all the way to philosophers in metaphysics. This resulted in often very enthusiast and interesting discussions. It was also very interesting for me to see how scientists in neuroscience struggle with similar issues as me, and to see how they approach things. I learned a lot of new things, some of which will pop up in separate posts on this blog in the future. Stay tuned!