Collaborators

I have been lucky to enjoy many productive collaborations with some very talented comrades. Below is a list of my current and past collaborators, including a description of our work together and links to their own sites.

Current Collaborators:

Jennifer Verdolin
Jen and I were in the same graduate cohort at Stony Brook University. Both before and during studies at SBU she studied prairie dogs, completing a massive dissertation project that encompassed thousands of hours of fieldwork. Towards the end of our studies at SBU we both took a seminar focused on individual-based modeling, where Jen first conceived of creating a model to simulate the prairie dog behavior. That model is now fieldTest, and we are currently writing up simulation results for several publications. These days Jen is a research affiliate at Duke University. She also is a regular guest on the D. L. Hughley show, where she uses her extensive knowledge of animal behavior to provide insights into human relationships. You can read more about her work here.

Rui-Wu Wang
Dr. Wang is at the Kunming Institute of Zoology, a division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on the mutualism between fig trees and fig wasps, and he uses both field experiments and mathematical theory to explain how this fragile, ecologically-critical interspecies relationship is maintained. We met through the Ecological Society of America‘s Author Help Directory and I provided language edits on one of his earlier publications. Since then, we have collaborated to produce papers exploring public goods games that shed light on the mutualisms that Dr. Wang studies in the field.

Jeffrey Yule
Jeff and I were both part of Lev Ginzburg’s lab at Stony Brook University. Working with Aby Joseph, an undergraduate independent study student, we worked in Mathematica to shed light on how varying functional response affects the predictions of models of Late Pleistocene extinction. A dual-Ph.D. in both English and Ecology and Evolution, Jeff is a talented writer and teacher with broad interests in paleontology. He is currently an Associate Professor at Louisiana Tech University.

Past Collaborators:

Greg Riestenberg
Greg is a former graduate student in Pratt’s Communications Design program. Greg and I collaborated during the Fall 2011 and Spring 2012 semesters to produce the Evolutionary Games Infographic Project, which provides free images that visually depict various evolutionary games. Greg is a versatile graphic designer with a keen ability to visually portray complex concepts. You can check out Greg’s work at www.gregrie.net.

Jean Ho Chu
Jean is a digital artist whose work invites users to playfully discover the complex properties of the systems she creates. We worked together to produce the Easy Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma (Easy-IPD) interface, which provides an intuitive, flexible way to explore the rich dynamics of the IPD. Jean’s amazing creativity — both as a programmer and a designer — imbued Easy-IPD with its clear, crisp, rich usability. Jean graduated from Pratt with a Master of Fine Arts in Digital Art in 2011. You can check out Jean’s work at www.jeanhochu.com.

Anshu Choudhri
Anshu Choudhri is an architect now living in her home city of Mumbai, India. During the Spring and Fall semesters of 2010 she tirelessly gathered and organized a collection of research articles that address the evolution of cooperation. The review paper that relies on her work is currently under development. Anshu graduated from Pratt with a Master of Arts in Architecture in 2010. She currently runs her own architectural firm, Sparch Studio.

Aaron Cohen
Aaron is a digital artist and programmer with a strong interest in interface design. He also has experience in education, which made him an ideal collaborator on the Evolution of Sustainable Use project. Aaron’s programming skills were critical to realizing this project’s goal of creating an efficient, user-friendly classroom simulation of the Tragedy of the Commons. Aaron graduated from Pratt with a Master of Fine Arts in Digital Art in 2010.

Dylan Moore
Dylan is a digital artist and programmer with a wonderful variety of interests and aptitudes. Dylan providing the programming genius behind the fieldTest simulation engine, which is a critical tool serving my ongoing research into the role that resource distribution plays in social group formation. Dylan graduated from Pratt with a Master of Fine Arts in Digital Art in 2009. He currently lives and works for Apple Computer in Santa Monica, California.

Lev Ginzburg
Lev was my advisor at Stony Brook University, where he provided me with a really broad and flexible background in theoretical ecology. Lev and I collaborated on a number of articles on ecological theory, with a particular emphasis on the ratio-dependent functional response. In addition to being a full Professor at SBU, Lev is also the owner of Applied Biomathematics, a company that provides educational and technical software for performing risk analysis. Lev’s two latest books (Ecological Orbits and How Species Interact) explore his most influential and controversial ideas in ecological theory.