H.B. Keller Colloquium

Cryo-EM is a Nobel Prize winning technology for determining 3-D biological molecular structures at high resolution. Reconstruction in cryo-EM is an inverse problem that involves many different fields of mathematics including statistical inference, optimization (convex and non-convex), numerical analysis, dimension reduction, representation theory, and information theory. We will discuss the mathematical and statistical foundation underlying computational methods for 3-D reconstruction, focusing on the challenges of reconstructing small size molecules and the reconstruction of flexible molecules. In passing, we will contrast modern deep learning algorithms with classical applied math and statistical methods.