HV: Research | Venkatachalam lecture

Organization of Biological Diversity: Some views from a Macroscope

Abstract: A central question in ecology is to understand the organisation of species at various temporal and spatial scales. The increasing degradation of the earth's biological diversity makes this an issue of immense practical concern. This talk will describe two parallel approaches in theoretical ecology which attempt to address certain related issues. The first approach is characterised by the search for "patterns" in statistical distributions of variables among individuals, populations or species at large temporal and spatial scales. The second approach has exploited the availability of computational power to construct large scale individual-based models to understand the nature of emergent patterns in ecological systems. These will be illustrated with examples and some of the mathematical and computational challenges that underlie these efforts will be outlined.

Dr. Suri Venkatachalam obtained his Bachelor's Degree in Chemical Engineering in 1990. In 1996 he was awarded a Ph.D at the Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, for his thesis in the field of experimental studies of critical phenomena in polymer solutions. For the last two years he has worked as a Post Doctoral Fellow at the Department of Physics, University of California, San Diego, where his work has involved experimental studies in the Neurobiology of rats, including the design and construction of measurement devices. He is now taking up a second Post Doctoral Fellowship at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore, India, where he will work on the modelling and analysis of complex ecological systems.

Venue: room 135, Faculty of Agricultural and Applied Biological Sciences, Coupure Links 653, Gent. Wednesday, November 25, 16.00 - 16.40.