Combinatorial and Algorithmic Aspects of Sequence Processing (Dagstuhl Seminar 11081)

Abstract

Sequences form the most basic and natural data
structure. They occur whenever information is electronically
transmitted (as bit streams), when natural language text is spoken or
written down (as words over, for example, the latin alphabet), in the
process of heredity transmission in living cells (as DNA sequence) or
the protein synthesis (as sequence of amino acids), and in many more
different contexts.  Given this universal form of representing
information, the need to process strings is apparent and actually a
core purpose of computer use. Algorithms to efficiently search
through, analyze, (de-)compress, match, learn, and encode/decode strings
are therefore of chief interest.  Combinatorial problems about strings
lie at the core of such algorithmic questions. Many such combinatorial
problems are common in the string processing efforts in the different
fields of application.

Scientists working in the fields of Combinatorics on Words, Computational Biology, Stringology, Natural Computing, and Machine Learning were invited to consider the seminar's topic from a~wide range of perspectives. This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 11081
``Combinatorial and Algorithmic Aspects of Sequence Processing''.