Dr Kathleen Steinhöfel

As a member of the Algorithms and Bioinformatics group, Dr Steinhöfel focusses on developing algorithmic approaches to computationally hard problems. In particular, problems that exhibit a combinatorial nature and that allow the formulation of objective functions to characterise the sought solutions are in the centre of our research. Such combinatorial optimisation problems arise in a variety of areas ranging from biology, computational finance to the general aim of using resources efficiently. The methods we develop utilise the power of local search strategies as well as landscape analysis tools. They are designed to cope with large scale input sizes and the complexity most real life applications posses.

Currently, topics in Bioinformatics such as protein structure prediction, molecular interactions involving microRNAs, and the identification of gene signatures are investigated by our group. Other applications include energy efficiency in the context of scheduling and FPGA mapping as well as data centre management.