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Mike Steel
Professor of Mathematics and Statistics
Director for Biomathematics Research Centre
Room 623, Erskine Building
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
University of Canterbury
Private Bag 4800
Christchurch, NEW ZEALAND
Phone: +64-3-364-2987 ext 7688
Fax: +64-3-364-2587
Email: m.steel@math.canterbury.ac.nz
Mike Steel directs the Biomathematics Research Centre, and is Professor in the Mathematics and Statistics Department of University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.
He is the deputy director (2009-), and a founding principal investigator of the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution.He is also an elected fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, and is an Associate Editor (2009-) of IEEE/ACM Transactions in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, and is on the editorial boards of Journal of Computational Biology and Evolutionary Bioinformatics.
From Jan. 1 2010 to end-2011 he is on leave undertaking a James Cook research FellowshipRecent updates
Research Interests
Applications of discrete mathematics (combinatorics, graph theory) and probability theory
to contemporary problems in biology.
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Current projects
- Phylogeny reconstruction, including the combinatorial and computational problems surrounding supertree construction (the amalgamation of trees that classify overlapping sets of species into a parent tree), phylogenetic networks and pedigrees
- Modelling sequence evolution, particularly the covarion model of site substitution, and analytical bounds on the information content of sequences under Markov site substitution models.
- The relationship between, and analysis of different phylogenetic methods.
- Models of speciation and the effect this has on the shapes of phylogenetic trees. Phylogenetic diversity and conservation
- Random autocatalytic networks and origin of life models.
- Alpine plants.
Research/Publications
Books and Papers
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Reconstructing Evolution - New Mathematical and Computational Advances, O. Gascuel and M. Steel eds., has been published (2007) by Oxford University Press. More info here. |
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Phylogenetics, C. Semple and M. Steel, has just been published (Jan 2003) by Oxford University Press graduate series Mathematics and its Applications. A table of contents of this book can be found here (PDF, 29 KB). Errata (PDF, 56 KB). * A second edition is possible but won't be out for a long time. |
A list of publications (with some available as .pdf files) can be found on my publications page.
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Curriculum Vitae
A short CV can be found here (PDF, 7 KB).
Talks/Presentations
Can we avoid 'SIN' in the House of 'No Common Mechanism'? (PDF, 1 MB), Evolution, Oregon, June 2010.
Talk at SMBE (Lyon) (PDF, <1 MB), July 2010.
Beyond 'event horizons' talk (PDF, 2.7 MB), Montpellier, June 2008.
Talk at Phylogenetic Diversity Symposium (PDF, 2 MB), Evolution, June 2007.
'War on Error' talk (PDF, 1.01 MB), Evolution, New York, June 2006.
Talk at CWI (PDF, 1.82 MB), Amsterdam, June 2006.
Talk at MSRI (PDF, 1.96 MB), Berkeley, April 2005.
Talk at IFCS (PDF, 3.05 MB), Chicago, July 2004.
Travel
Some places that I'll be in 2010.
Some places that I visited in previous years.
"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research"
Information for international visitors
Getting to New Zealand, and what to do once you get here
Conferences & Workshops
Phylogenetics: Challenges and conjectures from the INI programme 2007.
List of challenges and conjectures (PDF, 90.3 KB)
Final Report (PDF, 164 KB) for the 'Phylogenetics' Programme
$100 Challenges
(Conditions: A choice of NZ$100 plus bottle of NZ wine, OR US$100, OR free registration and accommodation grant at the annual New Zealand phylogenetics meeting (value NZ$300 - flights not included!) for the first correct solution to any of these problems).
- The phylogenetic inadmissibility conjectures (PDF, 34.4 KB)
- The parsimony conjectures (I and II) (PDF, 13.9 KB) - [24 November. 2009] Solved! A constructive proof of the conjecture in MP1 has been submitted by Elizabeth Housworth and Juanjuan Chai (Indiana University).
- The SPR conjecture (PDF, 11.1 KB)
- [UPDATE: 4 Dec. 2008] Stefan Gruenewald has claimed a solution for the general case, to be presented at Kaikoura09 (Feb 8-12).
- This has now been solved for rooted binary trees by Charles Semple and Magnus Bordewich in Feb. 2004
-[25 July, 2006] A claimed solution was submitted by researchers in Canada -- however [1 September,2006] the author informed us that there was an error in the argument - My favourite conjecture (PDF, 20 KB)
- This has been solved for 'balanced' trees by Elchannan Mossel, Nov. 2001
- [1 Sept. 2005] Mossel et al. have claimed a solution for the general case.
- [22 Sept. 2005] Solved! Mossel, Roch and Daskalakis presented with prize at UC Berkeley for their clever proof of this conjecture. You can read about it in this paper (ucdavis.edu). - Followup $100 conjecture: In reference to the previous conjecture (and its solution) show that a sequence length growth of strictly greater than log(n) is needed for tree reconstruction if one is restricted to using pairwise sequence comparisons (eg `distances'). - [1 Oct. 2009] Solved! by Sebastien Roch - forthcoming paper
- The quartet challenge: Is the following problem NP-hard? Given a binary phylogenetic X--tree T and a collection Q of quartet subtrees on X, is T the only tree that displays Q?
Other items
My pick (PDF, 7 KB) of five directions in phylogenetics that will grow in the next five years (April 2001)
My pick (PDF, 3 KB) of five directions in phylogenetics that will grow in the next five years (April 2006)
The dangers of writing a paper in WORD (PDF, 64 KB)
Probability on the bus (PDF)
Murphy's Law and its simple proof (PDF, 42 KB)
Are we alone in the Universe? (PDF, 22 KB)
Why starting a PhD ruined my publication rate (PDF, 2.2 MB)
The role of models
Do I even need to bother opening that email message?
Personal stuff
Publications
Classic mountain runs
Personal Photos
Information for international visitors
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