Bioinformatics in Africa: Part 4 - Morocco

Bioinformatics, in the UFR in Artificial Intelligence and Bioinformatics, deals with the management, the analysis, the modelling and the visualization of biological databases. Since the size of the databases is often exponential, the traditional algorithms are not very effective when seeking for a good computational solution.

To take care of this issue, many ways are opened to the researchers to improve the quality of the algorithms:

1. Usage of new information processing methods like artificial neuronal networks, genetic algorithms, etc. 2. Usage of Data mining  to explore biochemical databases,
3. Usage of Machine learning on the biological examples to solve, for example, the problem of classification in Bioinformatics.

UFR offers in addition a doctoral training in Computer Science and Bioinformatics.

Doctoral module which includes: a Diplôme des Etudes Supérieures Approfondies (DESA)  of two years; and a doctorate studies program with a national Ph.D. certification. Three specializations constitute the teaching trunk of the ENSAT: Computer engineering, Telecom  engineering, and electronic systems engineering.

Research Interest and Activities:

The following are the present areas of research interest:

1. Machine Learning and Profile Gene Expression of Cancer
2. Predicting Protein structure
3. Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) and multiple alignments
4. Transformational Grammar for sequence modelling
5. Physical Mapping: STSs
6. Evolutionary Computation applied to Genomic and Proteomic
7. Predicate Logic and Protein Structure

Web site and links:

http://www.ensat.ac.ma/udiab http://www.pasteur.fr/pasteur/international/annonce_coursBioinfoannonce06_casa.pdf