As a technologist, I'm interested in how communication and computing technologies influence human societies, particularly how such technologies can be used to promote various forms of social cooperation. I'm not only a student but also a maker of social technology. Currently, I'm making PersonaFolio, a system of web and phone applications for making, sharing, and collecting online contact cards. Previously, I made Evarium, a Facebook application that puts an animated simulation of organic evolution on your Facebook profile page. I also contributed to SICStus Prolog, a full-featured and widely used implementation of the Prolog programming language.
As a scientist, I've worked mainly on evolution and ecology (also known as population biology), particularly the interplay between organismal traits and their genetic bases in adaptive evolution, mostly using mathematical, computational, and statistical methods. For example, colleagues and I conducted statistical analyses of DNA sequences adjacent to human genes (so-called promoter regions) indicating that the regulation of many genes involved in neural development and function and/or in carbohydrate metabolism has evolved adaptively in the
human lineage (Haygood et al, 2007). At present, I'm turning my research toward social ecology and evolution, especially factors encouraging or inhibiting social cooperation.
I have a bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics from the University of California, Irvine, a master's degree in physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a doctorate in population biology from the University of California, Davis. I held postdoctoral fellowships in zoology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and in biology at Duke University. In spring, 2009, I left academia, having concluded that I could pursue my interests more happily and effectively as an independent entrepreneur.
