MATHEMATICAL-MODELING AND ANALYSIS IN BIOCHEMICAL-ENGINEERING - PAST ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES

This is a personal commentary on the history and future prospects of m athematical modeling and analysis in biochemical engineering. Major tr ansitions in these fields were driven by the appearance of the Aiba, H umphrey, and Millis text, Fredrickson's guidance on conceptualizing ma thematical representations of cell populations, and Ramkrishna's devel opment of the cybernetic modeling approach. The value of mathematical models to organize data, to consider interactions in complex systems i n a rational way, to correct the conventional wisdom, and to understan d essential qualitative features of biological systems has been clearl y documented in prior research. The impact of this research in biotech nology discovery has so far been limited, but this will change in the future if we are adept in recognizing emerging opportunities and in in tegrating new concepts and tools into our research. Mathematical struc tures and methods, allied with extraordinary contemporary computing po wer, are essential to the emerging field of functional genomics. Impor tant in this quest is a hierarchy of powerful modeling, analysis, and computational tools which can capture essential quantitative features of available experimental data and use these effectively for analysis and design of metabolism.