Research Focus
The general theme of my research interests is the search for a consistent understanding of biological processes (with an emphasis on (molecular) evolution) at the genotypic, phenotypic, and dynamical level. The techniques range from the analysis of the dynamical systems arising in chemical kinetics and population genetics, to large scale simulations of RNA evolution and the analysis of viral sequence data, to knowledge based protein potentials, and to algebraic combinatorics applied to the study of fitness landscapes. Major achievements in the area of bioinformatics cover multiple aspects of RNA bioinformatics, from the development of folding algorithms to the design of efficient RNA gene finders. Large scale comparative genomics studies in these areas have e.g. lead to the characterization of several of several ncRNA families.