Peter M.A. Sloot, Informatics Institute, Universiteit van Amsterdam

                 Complex Systems Simulation of HIV

Recent advances in experimental techniques such as detectors, sensors, and
scanners have opened up new windows into physical and biological processes 
on many levels of detail. The resulting data explosion requires
sophisticated techniques, like grid computing and collaborative virtual 
laboratories, to register, transport, store, manipulate, and share the 
data. The complete cascade from the individual components to the fully 
integrated multi-science systems crosses many orders of magnitude in 
temporal and spatial scales. The challenge is to study not only the 
fundamental processes on all these separate scales, but also their mutual 
coupling through the scales in the overall system, and the resulting 
emergent properties. These complex systems display endless signatures of 
order, disorder, self-organization and self-annihilation. Understanding, 
quantifying and handling this complexity is one of the biggest scientific 
challenges of our time.

In this lecture I will present -as an example- ongoing work on modeling
infectious diseases from the molecule all the way up to the population.
I will also identify the major hurdle for such research and a
possible way to overcome that hurdle.

Further reading:
www.virolab.org
http://www.science.uva.nl/research/pscs/papers/archive/Sloot2007a.pdf