As a theoretical ecologist and mathematical biologist, I work in on a number of topics both here at Cornell and as a scientific affiliate in Biophysics and Theoretical Biology at Los Alamos National Laboratory. My research interests fall generally under the umbrella of modeling and understanding population and community dynamics. Since joining the Ellner and Hairston groups as a post-doc in spring of 2002, I have been deeply involved in developing theory for our chemostat experiments. My work on the chemostat project involves theory and simulations which have helped to elucidate how
rapid, fluctuating prey evolution drives the unusual predator-prey cycles we observe in our microcosms.
As research faculty I am still involved in this project, and have extended my interest in this project outside of the laboratory to its natural analogue: freshwater lake systems. For the last several years I have been working on the spring clear water phase event in lakes Oneida and Onondaga, using a long-term data set which includes over 30 years of seasonal observations. Our goals include unveiling the
factors which determine the start and end times of the spring clear water phase, and also might explain the variability in the clear water phase from year to year.
With colleagues from Los Alamos National Laboratory, I continue work on the dynamics of chronic and acute HIV infection that I started as a post-doc - and recent escapee from geophysics – in 2001. My HIV work includes modeling the effects of vaccination and of opportunistic infection in chronically infected patients under antiretroviral treatment. In addition, I have recently begun exploring immune response during early-acute HIV infection as part of an effort to develop a vaccine for HIV.
Spatial modeling in ecology; methods and examples. Use of spatial statistics for interpreting spatial data. Metacommunity modeling, species interactions.
