I am finally putting up an entry, after a very long hiatus. (Actually I have been trying to move this blog to WordPress and I haven’t been able to export the entries properly – hope to have time over the Christmas break to tinker.)
Very excited about setting up for the ROADBLOCK project – a synthetic biology activity in collaboration with colleagues in Nottingham and Sheffield. A chance to finally get my teeth into a real biological problem and put these ideas into practice. The Warwick task will be to look a the “compilation” of a high-level synthetic component design into a DNA sequence which is viable, robust, and which satisfies some typing constraints.
I am looking for a postdoctoral researcher to help in this task. Another goal: try to find someone in the state of Sao Paulo with whom to collaborate, and apply for a BBSRC-FAPESP pump-priming grant .
Meanwhile, I am having a very interesting term, and actually teaching programming after a very long time. Java for first years. It does make me aware that lecturing is not the best way of teaching programming. We do have seminars, and assignments which guide the students into learning how to write and debug programs, but I am sure there are other more interactive approaches that can be explored. Maybe next year, if I am involved in this project again.
Teaching Compiler Design is, as always, a pleasure.
Non-REFable writings... 