Robustness and recovery in biological systems – New approaches for Grid computing?

Speaker: Marcus Kaiser

Abstract

Biological systems are remarkably robust towards damage. Disabling genes has often little effect on the survival of an organism. Similarly, the human neural system can in some cases compensate for the removal of half of the brain. After describing the organization of brain fibre networks, I will present examples of recovery in neural and metabolic systems. I will show how structural features of the network might enable or enhance recovery. Subsequently, I will discuss how these features could be applied to computer networks. In particular, I will outline a future research project on faster recovery after node failure in the domain of Grid computing.