Evolutionary Ideas and Applications on Wall Street

Investing and trading involve detecting, prioritizing, optimizing, and acting on relevant information. In an increasingly rich financial information environment, genetic and evolutionary ideas are particularly applicable on greater Wall Street.

David Leinweber has developed innovative financial technologies for institutional brokerage and investment firms. This talk surveys past and future applications of genetic and evolutionary computation for investors and traders,

David Leinweber,
California Institute of Technology
http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~djl/




Computing with DNA and RNA, in vivo and in vitro

Inspired by examples of biological computation, it has recently been possible to design molecular "computers" to solve a wide class of mathematical search problems. I will describe the process of gene unscrambling in ciliates, involving extensive DNA recombination and rearrangement, as an illustration of DNA computing in a microbial cell. I will then describe our construction of an RNA computer to solve an instance of a satisfiability problem derived from chess.

Laura Landweber received her A.B. from Princeton University summa cum laude in Molecular Biology in 1989 and her Ph.D. from Harvard University in Biology from the Department of Cellular and Developmental Biology in 1993. She was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard University Society of Fellows from 1993-1994 and then returned to Princeton in 1994, where she is an Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. A recipient of a Burroughs-Wellcome Fund and Sigma Xi Young Investigator Awards, her research spans the interplay between molecular biology, computer science, combinatorial chemistry, and evolution.

Laura Landweber
Princeton University
http://www.princeton.edu/~lfl/