Heading towards rules of life: From the genetic code to organisms to societies, helpfully illustrated by CHATGPT
I am now an Associate Professor of Physics at the Department of Natural Sciences at the Claremont Colleges, formerly the W. M. Keck Science Department. If you want to work with me, especially if you're a Claremont student, let me know! I'm currently not accepting students for the school year 2025-2026 due to me being on a sabbatical that will take me away from Claremont unless we have otherwise discussed.
My research lab had two arms: using machine learning to better understand biological data, and interpreting biological organisms as machine learners. We now have a small third arm: using science to produce societally positive results in scattered ways, i.e. a potential psychotherapy for schizophrenia, a controllable model for opinion dynamics, and ideas on AI alignment. And if you're interested in something else entirely, just let me know, and we'll shape a project to your liking. Don't be afraid if your interests are a little out there, by the way; I'm a fan of doing "weird" projects, and the same well-known math that tackles something like a model for bacterial chemotaxis might just tackle your favorite problem.
For past publications, check out my Google Scholar profile! An up-to-date CV is available here. And if you want code related to any of my publications, please check out my Github, and if it's not there, email me. I'm happy to share what I have.
Recently, I was profiled in Physics Magazine and Academic Minute for work on opinion dynamics, and profiled in CURESZ as a schizophrenia survivor.
My research lab had two arms: using machine learning to better understand biological data, and interpreting biological organisms as machine learners. We now have a small third arm: using science to produce societally positive results in scattered ways, i.e. a potential psychotherapy for schizophrenia, a controllable model for opinion dynamics, and ideas on AI alignment. And if you're interested in something else entirely, just let me know, and we'll shape a project to your liking. Don't be afraid if your interests are a little out there, by the way; I'm a fan of doing "weird" projects, and the same well-known math that tackles something like a model for bacterial chemotaxis might just tackle your favorite problem.
For past publications, check out my Google Scholar profile! An up-to-date CV is available here. And if you want code related to any of my publications, please check out my Github, and if it's not there, email me. I'm happy to share what I have.
Recently, I was profiled in Physics Magazine and Academic Minute for work on opinion dynamics, and profiled in CURESZ as a schizophrenia survivor.
If you think you might like to join my lab as a postdoc to work on a project that makes an energy-efficient ChatGPT out of real neurons, let me know by sending me an email or applying through here. Our job is to figure out how to structure living neural networks whose connectivity we can experimentally force by patterning the surface on which they grow. It should be a lot of fun to figure this out in a close collaboration with people at the University of Maryland, plus the Claremont area is not a bad place to live, Los Angeles is fun, and the Claremont Colleges are lovely. You can get teaching practice if you want at colleges that are world-renowned for their teaching while collaborating with and soaking in the atmosphere of a world-renowned research university-- the best of both worlds-- as you work on really fundamental problems (how does connectivity determine function?) with me and my lab. Experience with prediction, dynamical systems, and information theory preferred.