March 28th, 2pm, Mathilde Noual will give the talk: "On the dark side of science" at HCC Lab.

Mathilde Noual is a postdoc at the Freie Universität Berlin, affiliated to the Mathematics in Life Sciences group. Her DFG funded project is about "Causality, Time flow and Abstraction in Networks". Mathilde Noual  has been raised as a computer scientist by the Franco-Chilean school of theoretical computer science "extremists" and has also been rubbing shoulders with some theoretical biologists and some ("anti-extremist") biomathematicians from whom she has inherited her object of study (Boolean Automata Networks).

Abstract:

Present times are putting a lot of emphasis on the notions of knowledge and data. This agrees with academia’s preference for the universal scientific format of academic publications (a format which imposes its own set of constraints such as a title, an author list, an abstract, etc). I wish to put emphasis on a complement notion of "information in the dark", and on the possibility of designing an alternative universal scientific format to serve and support scientific research (as opposed to scientific findings). Information that is in the dark is information that is not necessarily found in the light of the knowledge, data, or even questions we already have. To access it, we have to change perspectives on the things we know. Interest in information in the dark implies interest in the (scientific) practice of non-knowing (a.k.a. exploration), as well as in humans' involvement in the information they manipulate. I will illustrate the concept with examples of it I have encountered in my field of research -- which relates to some discrete models of interaction systems that have been extensively used to model biological regulation networks. And I will mention a cross-disciplinary project to be founded on understanding of information in the dark and of possible methods for accessing it.

Date: 28. March 2019
Location: Königin-Luise-Straße 24-26, 14195 Berlin, room 120