William C. Ray

Research Description:

New technologies and improved techniques for the collection of biological data are invented almost daily. One of the compounded effects of these new and improved methods is the exponential growth of biological databases, and the super-exponential growth of correlative inferences that could be drawn from the data, if it could be mined effectively. Such improvements in our ability to process this data tend to come evolutionarily, leaving researchers further and further behind every day. Fortunately, much of the disparity between the rates of data collection and data comprehension, is often rooted in the application, and continued development of sub-optimal tools, rather than in any fundamental feature of the system. My laboratory focuses on understanding the disconnect between complex biological systems and currently applied data analysis techniques, and on developing new techniques that are more appropriate to the data and to the end-researcher needs.