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Hi there! 
1. What topics do you have some expertise in and would you be willing
to help others learn them?


I'm Vivi, half Belgian, half Chinese; grew up in the Washington DC area (Maryland side!).  My undergrad degree is in biology - I did a morphometrics project studying the ecology and evolution of snails from Lake Tanganyika, East Africa.  Last year, I worked on early tetrapod fossils in Cambridge, for my masters degree in palaeontology.  As a grad student at Duke, I'm currently working on modeling cell signaling networks, with the goal of understanding the function and evolution of these networks.  The real goal is to develop a more general understanding of the cumulative effects of feedback interactions (which seem to be everywhere in the network I study!) over long periods of time.  How do complex interactions happening at the scale of minutes or hours connect to long term physiological outcomes (disease progression)?  how do they connect to evolutionary dynamics?  I'm really looking forward to learning about modeling complex systems at different hierarchical scales at the CSSS in Beijing this summer.
My background is in macroevolution and paleontology.  In terms of technical skills I know a little about MatLab and Mathematica and would be happy to teach others what I know.  


I am a '''huge''' fan of Gregory Bateson. 


Looking forward to meeting you in Beijing!!
2. What do you want to learn at the CSSS?
How to translate a complicated problem into a mathematical framework that enables one to ask specific, tractable questions... How to apply mathematical models to study the etiology of complex systems -- what drives or causes evolutionary adaptations, diseases, and wars for example. 


Vivi
3. Do you have any projects or research interests that would benefit
from an interdisciplinary approach?
I really like some ideas from Gregory Bateson's work in anthropology, psychology and evolutionary biology.  So it's not so much that I have a specific project in mind that would benefit from an interdisciplinary approach, rather, my approach to seeing and understanding the world comes out of the interdisciplinary work of somebody else...
 
4. Do you have any ideas for what sort of project you would like to do
work on with other CSSS students this summer?
Not sure.  I recently came across some of L. F. Richardson's Mathematical Theory of War and am really fascinated by that work.  so maybe something related to that. 
 
5. Suppose you could travel one-hundred years in the future and ask
researchers any three questions. What would those questions be?
 
What is consciousness?
 
Have we come up with a better way of understanding and thinking about _causality_ in biology, in a way that can accommodate _minds_, and circular chains of causes? 
 
Can a more sophisticated biological understanding of causality help us solve human problems -- socio-economic and political problems, problems of cultivating natural resources without destroying them?

Latest revision as of 19:28, 24 June 2008

1. What topics do you have some expertise in and would you be willing to help others learn them?

My background is in macroevolution and paleontology. In terms of technical skills I know a little about MatLab and Mathematica and would be happy to teach others what I know.


2. What do you want to learn at the CSSS? How to translate a complicated problem into a mathematical framework that enables one to ask specific, tractable questions... How to apply mathematical models to study the etiology of complex systems -- what drives or causes evolutionary adaptations, diseases, and wars for example.

3. Do you have any projects or research interests that would benefit from an interdisciplinary approach? I really like some ideas from Gregory Bateson's work in anthropology, psychology and evolutionary biology. So it's not so much that I have a specific project in mind that would benefit from an interdisciplinary approach, rather, my approach to seeing and understanding the world comes out of the interdisciplinary work of somebody else...

4. Do you have any ideas for what sort of project you would like to do work on with other CSSS students this summer? Not sure. I recently came across some of L. F. Richardson's Mathematical Theory of War and am really fascinated by that work. so maybe something related to that.

5. Suppose you could travel one-hundred years in the future and ask researchers any three questions. What would those questions be?

What is consciousness?

Have we come up with a better way of understanding and thinking about _causality_ in biology, in a way that can accommodate _minds_, and circular chains of causes?

Can a more sophisticated biological understanding of causality help us solve human problems -- socio-economic and political problems, problems of cultivating natural resources without destroying them?

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