Today's Messages

The Spring 2026 Data Science and Analytics Seminar Series presents "When the Blind Watchmaker meets the Red Queen: Predicting the Next Pandemic" with invited speaker Mark Gallo, professor of biology at Niagara University, on Monday, February 9, from 4:30 to 5: 45 p.m. in Bacon Hall 117 (zoom: 718-6340613).

The presentation will focus on:

• We will follow the change of a sequence over time. 

• We will consider the "rules" of biology. 

• Can we (that means you) code a program to mimic the rules? 

• Can we use it to predict future mutations in known viruses? 

• When will these in-vivo rules apply to in-silico?

Dr. Gallo is a professor of biology at Niagara University, where he has been teaching for the past 30 years. He received his B.S. and M.S. in biochemistry from the University of Pittsburgh and his Ph.D. in microbiology from Cornell University. Dr. Gallo then performed post-doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in drug discovery. He is interested in the mechanisms of evolution, especially how it applies to the escalating arms race noted in the biological world. Most recently, he has become intrigued by the parallels of the biological and computational worlds especially as we see the proliferation of LLMs and AI. Are we missing the possibility of emergent properties in AI that are unpredictable and incomprehensible due to our limited understanding of natural selection?