Physics professor Ovidiu Lipan invited to submit a 'Perspective' to Science magazine

University of Richmond physicist Ovidiu Lipan was honored with an invitation to submit a ‘Perspective’ to the 25 January 2008 issue of Science.

In each issue of the publication, the editorial board selects several research papers that they believe have significance to a wider audience. In an effort to make those papers even more accessible, they invite selected scholars to comment on the papers but also to take it one step further and forecast the topic’s impact on the larger scientific community.

“Being selected to write a perspective is an honor,” said Lipan, who spent much of his Christmas holiday in Romania working on drafts, “particularly because they are by invitation only.”

Lipan’s work is in systems biology, and a particular paper he published in 2005 with Wing H. Wong describes the use of oscillatory signals in the study of genetic networks.

His perspective, “Enlightening Rhythms,” was a response to research conducted by Alexander van Oudenaarden and his group from MIT and Harvard. Alexander van Oudenaarden’s group uses oscillatory stimuli to decipher how an organism, the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, responds to environmental factors.

Lipan’s perspective is optimistic. If van Oudenaarden ‘s group was capable of using oscillatory stimuli to study osmo-adaptation feedback loops, then perhaps scientists are on their way to blending the biological and mathematical structure of living systems and understanding those living systems as stable, complex dynamic organizations.

Posted February 12, 2008