Statement of Research Interests - mauriceling/mauriceling.github.io GitHub Wiki

I am interested in life itself. My approach towards understanding the many mysteries of life is through the use of bioinformatics and computational biology - the interdisciplinary area of biology, computer science, and statistics.

Current bio-experimental techniques often produced large volumes of data. The bottleneck is using these data efficiently. I believe that much of science has been deductionist (breaking down to study each component in detail). Do we know enough to "re-design" or "re-build" a cell? What are the construction rules?

I view this through 2 different lenses.

Firstly, through the evolutionary lens; in words of Theodosius Dobzhansky, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution". I feel that as a biologist, there is no way of understanding or trying to decipher the rules of life in isolation, as a singular point of data. We have to look what is around it to make sense of it all.

Secondly, through the engineering lens; I poke it, stress it, describe it, and predict its next steps. In doing so, I hope to know the capabilities and limitations of life. Despite all its marvels, biological life or carbon-based life is one instance, one example of life. I believe that if we can decipher life's construction rules, we will be able to re-create life. We can test our current understanding of life or the lack of it by building and simulating artificial life models. I believe that biological studies and computer-based simulations are complementary to each other. To do so, I develop the computational tools as required.

Science is as much a social and cultural pursuit as a rational one. Hence, I am also interested in the social, cultural, and educational aspect of science. How we do science? How we teach science? How we interact with seniors, colleagues, and students? How we agree to disagree; and yet, maintain professional and personal friendships? This, I explore through an (auto)ethnographical and (auto)biographical approach.

In the primary research to product development continuum, I place myself at the application-directed research to product prototype stage. I will prefer to handover to the next team to actualize the eventual product.