Alice in "Bio-land": engineering challenges in the world of Life-Sciences

Alice is an engineer who ventures into the research world of life sciences. To her eyes, life sciences researchers work backwards compared to what happens in her world. It appears that their research methodology has a number of issues that may limit its potential. Nevertheless, she also becomes aware that a different set of problems arises if her own traditional top-down engineering approach is applied to life sciences. This article discusses how the authors see the role of systems and computational biology as a fundamental methodological "middle-ground" between these two (apparently) distant worlds. This article is part of a special issue on life sciences computing.