Faculty of Applied Sciences Department of Electronics and Information Systems Head of the Department: Prof. Dr. Eng. J. Van Campenhout RNA Secondary Structure Prediction by Stochastic Context-Free Grammars by Steven Van Vaerenbergh Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Eng. J.-P. Martens, Ghent University Instructor: Associate Prof. L. Vielva, University of Cantabria, Spain DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN ORDER TO OBTAIN THE ACADEMIC DEGREE OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEER Academic year 2002-2003