Sheridan Houghten Professor and Chair Department of Computer Science Brock University St. Catharines, Ontario Canada phone: 905 688 5550 ext 4526 fax: 905 688 3255 houghten@brocku.ca

Education

B.Sc. (Mathematics and Science College), Concordia University,1991

Master of Computer Science, Concordia University, 1993

Ph.D. (Computer Science), Concordia University, 1999

 

Teaching

• COSC 5P01

Research Interests

My research interests include combinatorics, algorithms and coding theory, including some applications to bioinformatics.

Prospective Students: If you are a student considering completing a Master's degree or an Honours project and you are interested in any of the above topics, then please contact me. Students should be motivated and comfortable with mathematics (primarily discrete mathematics). Since it can be very difficult to evaluate applications, you should provide as much information as possible about your interests - for example, you might describe projects which you have already undertaken or in which you are interested.

I work closely with my students and ensure that all research students will have the opportunity to publish their work in journals or conference proceedings. You should also look at the list of projects completed by some of my past and present students.

Online tables: Some of my papers consider the problem of establishing bounds on the number of codewords in optimal edit-metric codes and insertion-deletion correcting codes. Tables on these bounds are maintained at the following locations:

Edit Metric Codes

Insertion-Deletion Correcting Codes

Recent Papers

The following is a list of recent publications (2009-present only). Click here to see a full list of papers, technical reports and theses, including those recently submitted.

D.E.McCarney, S.Houghten and B.J.Ross, Evolutionary Approaches to the Generation of Optimal Error Correcting Codes, Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2012), accepted.

F.Alizadeh Noori and S.Houghten, A MultiObjective Algorithm with Side Effect Machines for Motif Discovery, 2012 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, accepted.

P.Comte, S.Vassiliev, S.Houghten and D.Bruce, “Genetic Algorithm with Alternating Selection Pressure for Protein Sidechain Packing and pK(a) Prediction”, BioSystems 105, p.263-270, 2011.

J.A.Brown, D.Ashlock, S.Houghten and J.Orth,  “Autogeneration of Fractal Photographic Mosaic Images”, 2011 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, p.1116-1123, June 2011.

J.Orth and S.Houghten, “Optimizing the Salmon Algorithm for the Construction of DNA Error-Correcting Codes”, 2011 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, April 2011.

J.Sun, S.Houghten and J.Ross, "Bounds on Edit Metric Codes with Combinatorial DNA Constraints", Congressus Numerantium 204, p.65-92, 2010.

D.Ashlock and S.Houghten, "Ring Optimization of Edit Metric Codes in DNA", ACM International Conference on Bioinformatics and Computational Biology 2010.

J.A.Brown, S.Houghten and D.Ashlock, "Side Effect Machines for Quaternary Edit Metric Decoding", IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Bioinformatics and Computational Intelligence 2010, 103-110.

P.Comte, S.Vassil'ev, A.Mahmood, M.R.Gunner, D.Bruce and S.Houghten, “Conformational Sampling of Proteins for the Generation of Molecular Ensemble Distributions", 27th Annual Eastern Regional Photosynthesis Conference (2010), poster p.35.

J.A.Brown, S.Houghten and D.Ashlock, "Edit Metric Decoding: A New Hope", Canadian Conference on Computer Science and Engineering 2009 (C3S2E09), 233-242.

J.A.Brown, S.Houghten and B.Ombuki-Berman, “Genetic Algorithm Cryptanalysis of a Substitution Permutation Network”, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Cyber Security 2009, 115-121.

D.Ashlock and S.K.Houghten, “DNA Error-Correcting Codes: No Crossover”, IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology 2009, 38-45.

Miscellaneous:

I am the coach for Brock University's teams entered in the ACM Programming Contest. If you are interested in participating, or wish to know more, contact me.

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