Research in Computer Science: A lot of stuff is tagged with "science" on the end Generally science is about building knowledge with as much certainty as possible Hypothesis testing is a big part of that Hypothesis for computer science often takes this form: "An artificial-intelligence system on a sufficiently-powerful computer can defeat even the best human chess player" That leads to a simple test: Try it and see what happens! Which is how hypothesis testing works in any field On to bioinformatics: Two ways this can work: 1. Form and test a hypothesis related to computation 2. Assist biologists in testing a hypothesis related to biology There's a greater focus on the second Some journals focus on publishing articles introducing useful tools What can we help with? Genomic comparisons Brief primer on string comparison methods and pitfalls BLAST, and GenBank Classification of species: Used to be by physical traits Terminology note: Bioinformatics is most closely associated with analysis of DNA specifically I'll defer to Wikipedia here, but not everybody does I actually work on image analysis GNA system, switch to slides (bio_pres.pdf) Mouse retinal, and zebrafish