Simona Constantinescu

Current Research Projects

Modeling of Cancer Progression based on Gene Expression Data;

Integrative statistical analysis of the drug sensitivity of colon cancer cell lines after exposure to bioactive food components;

Feature selection for progression structures through graph - guided fused lasso;

Research Interests

• Complex systems modeling in biology;
• Cancer progression;
• Evolutionary dynamics;
• Synthetic biology;
• Monotone control systems.

Publications

Papers

• Kaltenbach, H.-M., Constantinescu, S., Feigelman, J. and Stelling, J., "Graph-Based Decomposition of Biochemical Reaction Networks into Monotone Subsystems", Proceedings of WABI 2011, volume 6833 of Lect. Notes Bioinformatics, pages 139-150. Springer, 2011 [pdf]

Master Thesis

• Monotone Modules Approximation: Among the multitude of techniques used in modeling dynamical systems, the class of monotone (control) systems is primarily distinguished through a robust response to perturbations. In the context of biological systems, this feature is particularly appealing, since it provides a qualitative guarantee on the behavior of the system, under fluctuations in its parameter values. Decomposing a complex system into monotone modules and approximating their behavior (i.e. replacing them with simpler, yet similar subsystems) sheds new light into the intrinsic dynamical behavior of a monotone system. [pdf]

Talks

• Inferring Cancer Progression from Gene Expression Data. SIB PhD Training Network, Bern, March 2012.
• Inferring Cancer Progression from Gene Expression Data. Zürich Interaction Seminar, Zürich, April 2012.

Posters

• Inferring Cancer Progression from Gene Expression Data. 11th European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB12), Basel, September 2012.
• Inferring Cancer Progression from Gene Expression Data. SIB Days, Biel, January 2013.

Curriculum Vitae