CS legend Costas Iliopoulos in Dhaka

The Kings College of London will sign a memorandum with the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) for next-generation biological sequence research.

Kings College’s Algorithm Design Group Head Costas Iliopoulos is in Dhaka on a five-day tour that started on Saturday, to launch a joint project titled ‘Advances in algorithm for next generation biological sequence’ between the two institutions.

He is leading the Kings team on the project, while the BUET team is led by Prof Sohel Rahman.

Speaking to bdnews24.com, Iliopoulos said he had enjoyed the culture and people of Dhaka.

“We have a British Council-funded project called analysis of DNA sequencing. We’ve formed two teams, one in London and the other one at BUET. These teams will coordinate to work on DNA sequences,” he said.

The project aims to collect data, find the algorithms to process these data and construct DNA sequences.

“We have collected a lot of data that we don’t know how to process. The older methods are very clumsy for processing so much data,” he said.

“Our main goal is to create DNA sequences with this data. We’ve worked on several corn viruses,” he added.

He praised the BUET team, saying, “The BUET team is very good. Some of them are very good at programming, they’re also very skilled with algorithms.”

The scientist said he wanted to return to Bangladesh. “I was supposed to come in December. But the BUET team is coming to London in February, so we won’t be coming,” he said.

“But maybe next year when I’m going to Australia I might drop by. Can’t say for sure,” he said.

BUET computer science professor Mohammad Kaykobad told bdnews24.com, “Malaysian and Korean students used to come to our institutions to study. Now our students go there. This shows the state of our education more than anything.”

“There was a time when our scientists would get published in international journals. Now there is no research work at the universities at all,” he added.

“The days of self-congratulatory work are gone. If our students work with scholars from developed nations, they will learn new things. I think this project will bring in these benefits,” Prof Kaykobad said.

Iliopoulos, known as a living legend of computer science, took part in several seminars during his stay to talk about the project.

He is the editor of two international computer science journals - the Journal of Discrete Algorithms and the Journal of Computer Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing.

His work spans from design and analysis of string algorithms, algorithms for music analysis, algorithms for molecular sequences, data compression and compressed matching, algorithm engineering for music and biological sequences, validation and decomposition of partially occluded images.

He obtained his PhD in computer science from the University of Warwick in 1983, after his masters in computer science by research in 1981.