פרופ' שגיא שניר

Our lab focuses on mathematical and algorithmic approaches to bioinformatics problems in the fields of Evolution and Genomics. The problems we investigate are characterized by a scarcity of accurate modeling, or reliable, exact, and fast methods. This is partly due to the following reasons: Our lack of understanding of the biological factors influencing the evolutionary process. Almost all problems arise in this field are computationally hard to solve. We have sought to address these two issues by pursuing a number of directions: Understand existing mathematical models and inspect how well they represent the actual biological processes. Introduce new efficient algorithmic procedures to address established problems. Develop new models for evolutionary processes using large biological data sets. For our research, we use tools from fields such as combinatorial optimization, statistics and probability, mathematics, and information theory. Our research is characterized by ample collaborations with researchers from broad disciplines under the general framework of a systematic analysis of evolutionary processes aiming at finding biologically significant patterns.