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Courses - Fall 2024
CMSC
Computer Science Department Site
Open Seats as of
10/09/2024 at 10:30 PM
CMSC702
Algorithmic Evolutionary Biology
Credits: 3
Grad Meth: Reg, Aud
Restriction: Restricted to Master's/Doctoral students in Computer Science, Electrical and Computer, Engineering, Mathematics, Bioengineering, or permission of instructor.
Credit only granted for: CMSC702 or CMSC829A.
Formerly: CMSC829A.
Covers fundamental computational problems from comparative genomics and evolutionary biology. Topics include multiple sequence alignment and the reconstruction of evolutionary histories (e.g., phylogenetic trees and networks). These tasks are typically framed as NP-hard optimization problems, motivating the development of heuristics based on constraints, graph algorithms, and more recently machine learning. We analyze algorithms from the empirical and theoretical perspectives (e.g., computational complexity, optimality guarantees, and statistical consistency under popular models of evolution). Lastly, we discuss how algorithms are leveraged in emerging applications, like evolutionary analyses of tumors and pathogens, along with their limitations and directions for future research.