Preface
It is a great pleasure to introduce this collection of chapters to the readers of the book series Emerging Trends in Computer Science and Applied Computing (Morgan Kaufmann/Elsevier). This book is entitled Emerging Trends in Computational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology—Algorithms and Software Tools. We are indebted to Quoc-Nam Tran (professor and department chair) of the University of South Dakota for accepting our invitation to be the senior editor. His leadership and strategic plan made the implementation of this book project a wonderful experience.
Computational biology is the science of using biological data to develop algorithms and relations among various biological systems. It involves the development and application of data-analytical algorithms, mathematical modeling, and simulation techniques to the study of biological, behavioral, and social systems. The field is multidisciplinary, in that it includes topics that are traditionally covered in computer science, mathematics, imaging science, statistics, chemistry, biophysics, genetics, genomics, ecology, evolution, anatomy, neuroscience, and visualization, where computer science acts as the topical bridge between all such diverse areas (for a formal definition of computational biology, refer to http://www.bisti.nih.gov/docs/compubiodef.pdf). Many consider the area of bioinformatics to be a subfield of computational biology that includes methods for acquiring, storing, retrieving, organizing, analyzing, and visualizing biological data. The area of systems biology is an emerging methodology applied to biomedical and biological scientific research. It is an area that overlaps with computational biology and bioinformatics. This book attempts to cover the emerging trends in many important areas of computational biology, bioinformatics, and systems biology.
The book is composed of selected papers that were accepted for the 2013 and 2014 International Conference on Bioinformatics & Computational Biology (BIOCOMP’13 and BIOCOMP’14), July, Las Vegas, USA.
The BIOCOMP annual conferences are held as part of the World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Applied Computing (WORLDCOMP; http://www.world-academy-of-science.org/). An important mission of WORLDCOMP includes “Providing a unique platform for a diverse community of constituents composed of scholars, researchers, developers, educators, and practitioners. The congress makes concerted effort to reach out to participants affiliated with diverse entities (such as universities, institutions, corporations, government agencies, and research centers/labs) from all over the world. The congress also attempts to connect participants from institutions that have teaching as their main mission with those who are affiliated with institutions that have research as their main mission. The congress uses a quota system to achieve its institution and geography diversity objectives.” Since this book is mainly composed of the extended versions of the accepted papers of BIOCOMP annual conferences, it is no surprise that the book has chapters from highly qualified and diverse group of authors.
We are very grateful to the many colleagues who offered their services in organizing the BIOCOMP conferences. Their help was instrumental in the formation of this book. The members of the editorial committee included:
• Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Cooperating Associate Professor of CIS; Director, Center for Undergraduate Research (CUGR); Director, Wireless Sensor Networks (WiSe-Net) Lab; University of Maine, Orono, Maine, USA; Associate Editor: IEEE/KICS Journal of Communications and Networks and IET Wireless Sensors Systems; Vice President of Technology and Board Member, Beyran Corp, Maryland, USA; Co-Founder and CTO, Navindor Company, Maryland, USA
• Nizar Al-Holou (Congress Steering Committee)
• Professor and Chair, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department; Vice Chair, IEEE/SEM-Computer Chapter; University of Detroit Mercy, Detroit, Michigan, USA
• Hamid R. Arabnia (Congress Steering Committee)
• Professor of Computer Science; University of Georgia, Graduate Studies Research Center, Athens, Georgia, USA; Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Supercomputing (Springer); Editor-in-Chief, Emerging Trends in CS and Applied Computing (Elsevier); Editor-in-Chief, Transactions of Computational Science and Computational Intelligence (Springer); Elected Fellow, International Society of Intelligent Biological Medicine (ISIBM)
• Michael Panayiotis Bekakos (Congress Steering Committee)
• Professor of Computer Systems; Director, Laboratory of Digital Systems, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece; Head, Parallel Algorithms and Architectures Research Group (PAaRG)
• Dr. Sidahmed Benabderrahmane
• INRIA (French National Computer Science Institute), Rocquencourt, France
• Juan-Vicente Capella-Hernandez
• Executive and Quality Manager, Wireless Sensor Networks Valencia, Inc.; Member, Editorial Board: IEEE RITA Journal; Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain
• Juan Jose Martinez Castillo
• Director of the Acantelys Research Group and Coordinator of the Computer Engineering Department, Universidad Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho, Venezuela
• Dr. Daniel Bo-Wei Chen
• Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
• Dr. Xin Chen
• Research Corporation of the University of Hawaii/Institute for Astronomy, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
• Kevin Daimi (Congress Steering Committee)
• Director, Computer Science and Software Engineering Programs, Department of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Software Engineering, University of Detroit Mercy, Detroit, Michigan, USA
• Somdip Dey
• School of Computer Science, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
• Mary Mehrnoosh Eshaghian-Wilner (Congress Steering Committee)
• Professor of Engineering Practice, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA; Adjunct Professor, Electrical Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), California, USA
• Oleg Finko (PDPTA)
• Krasnodar Higher Military Command Engineering School Rocket Forces, Russia; Institute of Information Technology and Security, Kuban State Technological University, Russia
• Mohammad Shahadat Hossain
• Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Chittagong, Chittagong, Bangladesh; Visiting Professor, Trisakti University, Indonesia; Visiting Academic Staff, University of Manchester, UK
• Dr. Guofeng Hou (ICOMP)
• Bell Laboratories and Microsoft Corporation, USA
• George Jandieri (Congress Steering Committee and Vice Chair of CSC and BIOCOMP Co-Editor)
• Georgian Technical University, Tbilisi, Georgia; Chief Scientist, Institute of Cybernetics, Georgian Academy of Science, Georgia
• Young-Sik Jeong (Congress Steering Committee)
• Department of Multimedia Engineering, Dongguk University, Seoul, South Korea
• Dr. Christos Kartsaklis (PDPTA)
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA
• Dattatraya V. Kodavade (Congress Steering Committee)
• Head of Computer Science and Engineering, DKTE Society’s Textile and Engineering Institute, Ichalkaranji, Maharashtra State, India
• Dr. Ying Liu
• Division of Computer Science, Mathematics and Science; College of Professional Studies, St. John’s University, Queens, New York, USA; lifetime member, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• George Markowsky (Congress Steering Committee)
• Professor and Associate Director, School of Computing and Information Science; Chair International Advisory Board of IEEE IDAACS; Director 2013 Northeast Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition; Chair, Bangor Foreign Policy Forum; President, Phi Beta Kappa Delta Chapter of Maine; Cooperating Professor of Mathematics and Statistics Department, University of Maine, Orono, Maine, USA; Cooperating Professor of School of Policy and International Affairs, University of Maine, Orono, Maine, USA
• Dr. Andrew Marsh (Congress Steering Committee)
• CEO, HoIP Telecom Ltd, UK; Secretary General of World Academy of BioMedical Sciences and Technologies (WABT) a UNESCO nongovernmental organization, United Nations
• Dr. Kamal Mehta
• Department of Computer Engineering, Institute of Technology, Nirma University, Ahmedabad, India
• G. N. Pandey (Congress Steering Committee)
• Vice-Chancellor, Arunachal University of Studies, Arunachal Pradesh, India; Adjunct Professor, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad, India
• James J. (Jong Hyuk) Park (Congress Steering Committee)
• Department of Computer Science and Engineering (DCSE), SeoulTech, Korea
• R. Ponalagusamy
• Department of Mathematics, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, India
• Dr. Xinyu Que (PDPTA)
• IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York, USA
• Dr. Alberto Cano Rojas
• Department of Computer Science, University of Cordoba, Spain
• Pokkuluri Kiran Sree
• Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, India
• Fernando G. Tinetti (Congress Steering Committee; BIOCOMP Co-Editor)
• School of Computer Science, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, La Plata, Argentina; Co-editor, Journal of Computer Science and Technology (JCS&T)
• Quoc-Nam Tran (BIOCOMP Co-Editor, Session Chair)
• Professor and Chair, Department of Computer Science, University of South Dakota, Vermilion, South Dakota, USA
• Patrick S. P. Wang (Congress Steering Committee)
• Fellow: IAPR, ISIBM, WASE; Professor of Computer and Information Science, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA and Zijiang Visiting Chair, ECNU, Shanghai, NTUST, Taipei; iCORE Visiting Professor, University of Calgary, Canada; Otto-von-Guericke Distinguished Guest Professor, University Magdeburg, Germany
• Shiuh-Jeng Wang (Congress Steering Committee)
• Department of Information Management, Central Police University, Taiwan; Program Chair, Security and Forensics, Taiwan; ROC; Director, Information Crypto and Construction Lab (ICCL) and ICCL-FROG
• Mary Q. Yang (Congress Steering Committee and Vice Chair of ABDA and BIOCOMP)
• Director, Mid-South Bioinformatics Center and Joint Bioinformatics Ph.D. Program, Medical Sciences and George W. Donaghey College of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, USA
• Dr. Hao Zheng; ThermoFisher Scientific, Sunnyvale, California, USA
We are grateful to all authors who submitted their contributions to us for evaluation. We express our gratitude to Steve Elliot (executive editor at Elsevier) and his staff.
We hope that you enjoy reading this book as much as we enjoyed editing it.
On Behalf of Editorial Board: