Ofer Biham ( he, עופר ביהם) is a faculty member at

The Racah Institute of Physics The Racah Institute of Physics () is an institute at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, part of the faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences on the Edmund J. Safra Campus in the Givat Ram neighborhood of Jerusalem. The institute is the cent ...

of the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Dr. Chaim Weiz ...

in Israel. Biham received his Ph.D. for research on quasiperiodic systems at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1988, under the supervision of David Mukamel. In later years, Biham was involved in the development of methods for the calculation of unstable periodic orbits in

chaotic systems Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of scientific study and branch of mathematics focused on underlying patterns and deterministic laws of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, and were once thought to have ...

, models for efficient simulations of traffic flow and

quantum computation Quantum computing is a type of computation whose operations can harness the phenomena of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, interference, and entanglement. Devices that perform quantum computations are known as quantum computers. Though ...

. The focus of Biham's current research is on the development of computational methodologies for the simulation of

stochastic process In probability theory and related fields, a stochastic () or random process is a mathematical object usually defined as a family of random variables. Stochastic processes are widely used as mathematical models of systems and phenomena that appea ...

es in

interstellar chemistry Astrochemistry is the study of the abundance and reactions of molecules in the Universe, and their interaction with radiation. The discipline is an overlap of astronomy and chemistry. The word "astrochemistry" may be applied to both the Solar Syst ...

and in

genetic network A gene (or genetic) regulatory network (GRN) is a collection of molecular regulators that interact with each other and with other substances in the cell to govern the gene expression levels of mRNA and proteins which, in turn, determine the fun ...

s. Biham is known for the

Biham–Middleton–Levine traffic model The Biham–Middleton–Levine traffic model is a self-organizing cellular automaton traffic flow model. It consists of a number of cars represented by points on a lattice with a random starting position, where each car may be one of two types: t ...

which he formulated with

A. Alan Middleton Arthur Alan Middleton is a professor of physics and the associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University. He is known for his work in the fields of disordered materials such as random magnets, spin glasses, and interface ...

and Dov Levine in 1992. It is possibly the simplest model containing phase transitions and self-organization. His doctoral students include

Daniel Lidar Daniel Amihud Lidar is the holder of the Viterbi Professorship of Engineering at the University of Southern California, where he is a Professor of Electrical Engineering, Chemistry, Physics & Astronomy. He is the Director and co-founder of the US ...

Bibliography

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References

External links

Ofer Biham's homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Biham, Ofer Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Israeli physicists Israeli Jews Jewish physicists