November 6, 2008
Math series kicks off with talk by Felsenstein
Joseph Felsenstein, professor of Genome Sciences and of Biology at the UW, will speak on Evolutionary Trees, Coalescents and Gene Trees: Can Mathematicians Find the Woods? at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 13, in 210 Kane.
The lecture is the first in a series of colloquia called “MathAcrossCampus” sponsored jointly by the mathematical sciences departments at the UW. The talks, which will be given by high level researchers who are also renowned public speakers, are intended to be accessible to a wide audience.
If you don’t recognize the terms in Felsenstein’s title, here are some definitions: An evolutionary tree is a graph that shows the sequence of events where one species splits into two. Coalescents are trees of copies of genes within a single species. And trees of gene duplication show the origin of new genes from old ones. All these trees are interrelated, and they “live” in unusual and difficult spaces, according to Felsenstein.
There will be two other talks in the series — one each in winter and spring quarters. They are free and open to the public.
More information on these talks can be found on the web at http://www.math.washington.edu/mac/talks.html.
