Current and Former Students

• Frederick Robinson: Mathematics REU Student, Summer 2011.
• Project: coming soon
• Juanjuan Chai: Mathematics PhD student. Graduated May, 2011.
  • Project: Solved a $100 conjecture of Mike Steel that phylogenies can be recovered under the method of maximum parsimony using on the order of the logarithm of the number of taxa binary characters. Gave a correct proof of generic identifiability of all of the parameters of that GTR + Gamma + I model of DNA evolution in phylogenetics. She also showed that a modification of the two pathway model for crossovers in meiosis where pairing crossovers are "counted" by the interference process is so mathematically close to the model where they are not counted but are independent that the two models are not seperable for all practical purposes.
  • First position: NimBIOS postdoctoral position

• Tony Jhwueng: Mathematics PhD student. Graduated September, 2010.
  • Project: Explored the goodness of fit of various models of evolution to real taxonomic data and developed a new comparative method for non-tree-like speciation events (phylogenies with hybridization). Most important findings: most data is not normally distributed so there is a need for new models of evolution that lead to non-normal trait distributions and/or non-parametric methods for comparative analyses.
  • First position: NimBIOS postdoctoral position

• John Brown: Mathematics REU student, Summer 2009.
  • Project: Created a Metropolis-Hastings algorithm for sampling uniformly at random from constrained phylogenies.

• Min Kyung Jung: Mathematics PhD student. Graduated September, 2007.
  • Project: Various including developed appropriate andomization tests for testing the independence of gene duplication scattering on a genome; developed appropriate tests for determining significant segegation distortion along a chromosome using information from multiple markers with missing data.
  • First position: NYCOM: New York College of Osteopathic Medicine

• Chris Durden: Mathematics REU student, Summer 2006.
  • Project: Explored the effects of lack of independence between statistical tests on the False Discovery Rate.

• Lalitha Viswanath: Informatics Master's student. Graduated September, 2005.
  • Project: Created an easy-to-use graphical user interface for geneticists for the analysis of crossover interference in tetrad data under the two-pathway model.
  • First position:

• James Slaven: Mathematics Master's student. Summer project in 2004.
  • Project: Analyzed discrete time series of lizard markings.
  • First and current position: Biostatistics and Epidemiology Branch, Health Effects Laboratory Division, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Morgantown, WV 26505, USA