Author Archives: Ann Zsilavetz

(The following article and faculty profile were written by Danielle Leng and published on the School of Science’s webpage)

During TCNJ’s Mentored Undergraduate Summer Experience (MUSE) 2014, Dr. Dimitris Papamichail worked together with computer science student Nathan Gould (’17) and biology student Oliver Hendy (’15) to study different computer programs that answer biological questions through the use of synthetic genes. Their summer-long efforts have culminated into a peer-reviewed paper that was published in the journal Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology.

Synthetic biology is an interdisciplinary science, promoting the utilization of algorithms to create novel biological systems. By using computer biological models, scientists are able to further gene and protein research in terms of their structure and function and create novel drugs and vaccines. Specifically, Papamichail and his research students are looking into tools that aid the design of synthetic genes. Each tool utilizes different algorithms and provides varying lists of pros and cons.

Hendy and Gould were able to obtain experience researching the various computer programs, but also have their efforts showcased in a published paper. Their publication stems from Papamichail’s current research on improving algorithms for synthetic gene design.

– Danielle Leng

Congratulations to Scott Bouloutian, a senior in the Computer Science department, for his accepted publication in the International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC)!  His research paper, titled “Artificial Intelligence Gaming Assistant for Google Glass”, is a continuation of his mentored research work and utilizes knowledge from several fields of computer science including, Computer Vision, Artificial Intelligence, and Cloud Computing. His paper was accepted after being blind-refereed by three reviewers based upon accuracy and originality of ideas, clarity and significance of results, and presentation quality. Scott will be presenting a poster at the symposium in Las Vegas in December. Congratulations Scott!

TCNJ’s MUSE (Mentored Undergraduate Summer Experience) program runs every summer. This year, Dr. Dimitris Papamichail worked with Joie Murphy, Nathan Gould, and Dylan Wulf – all rising sophomore Computer Science Majors – to complete their specific projects, described below by Dr. Papamichail:

Joie Murphy and Dylan Wulf worked on a project that aims to develop a set of computational tools to aid the computational textual criticism of Latin texts.  An ultimate goal of traditional textual criticism is the reconstruction of the archetype of a given work, where various manuscripts from different time periods and from different regions are available as the source of texts for reconstruction; some are only fragments. To tackle this goal, it is important to figure out, by comparing differences and similarities among multiple versions the work, whether one version is derived from another, and whether two or more versions descend from a hypothetical version that is now lost. The students worked on methods to construct and evaluate trees representing the relationships of extant and hypothetical extinct documents.

Nathan Gould and Oliver Hendy (senior Biology major) studied algorithmic issues behind synthetic gene optimization and the approaches that different computational tools have adopted to redesign gene DNA sequences and maximize desired coding features. The students studied an extended bibliography in synthetic biology and gene redesign, and utilized test cases to demonstrate the efficiency of each gene design approach, as well as identify their strengths and limitations of the available tools. This study resulted in a manuscript that has been submitted for publication.

For more information on MUSE, please visit TCNJ’s webpage:  http://fscollab.pages.tcnj.edu/muse/