Project facts Principal investigator: Prof. Corrado Priami Funding agency: Cariplo Foundation and Caritro Foundation Duration: 36 months Starting date: 1-Feb-2008 Euro: 1.700.000 Contact person:  Ivan Mura

Summary

This project addresses the bio-inspired definition of new modelling languages and tools that are suited to represent and to analyze the properties and the time-dependent behaviour of complex systems composed of a huge number of competing, cooperating and communicating components. Starting from the excellent and challenging examples provided by a set of selected case studies from biological systems offered by the other NOBEL platforms, the project intends to identify the key modelling elements required to capture and characterize the aspects of modularity, self-organization and hierarchy to define and prototype a composable and scalable framework that integrates modelling and evaluation features for analysis, prediction of systems behaviour and inference of new knowledge. The involvement of bioscientists conducting project-specific ongoing experimental research on reverse engineering of living cells is essential to the strategic concept of this proposal. The close cooperation of experts from the ICT field and systems analysis (reverse engineering) and scientists from the field of molecular biosciences creates an integrated multi-disciplinary effort whose results will be applicable to both research communities. The modelling framework produced by the project will be subject to evaluation with respect to the biological case studies used for determining the requirements of the framework.