Moses Biological Computation Lab

	Dr. Melanie Moses Principle Investigator Professor, Department of Computer Science Professor, Biology Department External Faculty, Santa Fe Institute We live in a complex world. From the spread of disease in increasingly interconnected human populations to the impact of fossil-fueled economies on global climate, the greatest challenges in modern science and engineering require understanding complex systems, what makes them efficient and resilient, and why they fail. My lab studies complex biological systems including the adaptive immune system and ant colonies. I use this understanding to design efficient, robust, adaptive and scalable engineered systems, including autonomous robots that mimic ant behaviors to collect resources cooperatively.
	Dr. Matthew Fricke Research Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science Research Assistant Professor, Center for Advanced Research Computing VolCAN requires the coordination of distributed robot swarms to successfully search in large hazardous regions. My work falls into three related categories: distributed biological processes (e.g. chemical reaction networks, immunological and social-insect search processes, and neural networks), parallel supercomputing, and algorithms for robot swarms. Robots can explore areas too dangerous for humans and therefore help to answer basic scientific questions. In the VolCAN project, we designed and built aerial robots and algorithms to sample gasses from volcanos. This data contributes to our understanding of climate change, the prediction of eruptions, and how best to coordinate teams of robot scientists in general.
	John Ericksen Research Assistant PhD Student: Department of Computer Science John Ericksen is a software developer with Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies and a computer science Ph.D. student at the University of New Mexico with the Moses Biological Computation Lab. Working with the earth and planetary sciences department, John's research focus is on autonomous airborne robot swarms used to sample volcanic C0₂ plumes. The goal of this is to link volcanic C0₂ output with volcanic behavior to better understand the precursors to life-threatening eruptions. John has also published on a variety of other research topics including software architecture, evolutionary complex systems, and intelligent swarm robotics.
	Carter Frost Student Technical Specialist Undergraduate: Department of Computer Science Senior Student Trouble Maker Carter is a transfer student from Santa Cruz, California he is just starting his second semester here at UNM. For over 10 years he worked in cybersecurity working on private key infrastructure like national ID systems, Certificate management and private key storage systems called HSMs. So he worked on systems that establish and maintain trust. He has been teaching at Cabrillo College/PVUSD engineering camps well over the 7 years, as well as teaching as a supplemental instructor at Cabrillo College. Carter got into robotics ~5 years ago initially through his local community college in California (Cabrillo College's) Robotics club. He worked remotely with UNM's Moses Biological Computation Lab on various projects like with NASA's Houston space center on a new class of rovers for the Moon & Project chili house. He has made the move out out to Albuquerque and is now working on UNM's VolCAN team as well as working on Swarmathon TNG.
	Julie Hayes Research Assistant Phd Student: Department of Computer Science Julie Hayes is a PhD student in the Moses Biological Computation Lab at the University of New Mexico. Her research focuses on large scale agent-based ecological simulations using high performance computation. Specifically, she is developing a spatially explicit model of fish social foraging dynamics on tropical coral reefs. More broadly, she is interested in understanding collective intelligence phenomena in natural and human systems. She earned a BA in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Colorado. Before returning to research, she worked in outdoor education and nonprofits.
	Ellie Larence Undergraduate Research Assistant Ellie Larence is an undergraduate at the University of New Mexico (UNM). She has a bachelor’s degree in biology and worked as a molecular biologist at the New Mexico Department of Health before returning to UNM to study computer science. Previous research projects Ellie has worked on include characterizing morphological variation in American marten and evaluating the performance of deep learning models. Currently, she is working with Dr. Melanie Moses to develop an agent-based model of SARS-CoV-2 infection, using supercomputing resources to simulate the effects of the innate immune response on viral infections. She is also an active member of UNM’s supercomputing team, participating in national competitions building, running, profiling, and optimizing HPC applications on multiple computing systems. Ellie is broadly interested in applying computational techniques to challenging biomedical research questions and is particularly excited by machine learning applications to genomic data. She plans to pursue a Ph.D. focusing on problems in computational genomics.
	Akil Andrews Research Assistant PhD Student: Department of Computer Science I am Akil Andrews a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science at UNM. My research interest's are in artificial intelligence, machine learning, evolutionary algorithms, artificial life, and computational science. My goal is to research algorithms that mimic life. I also enjoy following research in particle physics, classical and quantum mechanics, general relativity, and cosmology. My personal belief is that technology will one day answer the origin and meaning of life. After graduation with my Doctoral degree, I plan to join research efforts in pursuit of the answer.
	Jannatul Ferdous Graduate Research Assistant Jannatul Ferdous is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico. She holds an MSc in Computer Science from the same institution and earned her BSc in Computer Science from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. She is doing her Ph.D. under the direct supervision of Dr. Melanie Moses in the Moses Biological Computation Lab. Additionally, she serves as a graduate intern at Los Alamos National Lab. Jannatul is at the forefront of interdisciplinary research, connecting computer science and biology. Her research is centered on the intricate world of biological systems, with a specific focus on the immune systems. Her work involves the development of computational and mathematical models, utilizing techniques such as Agent-Based Modeling (ABM), simulations, and advanced statistical tools. Her personal website link: https://www.cs.unm.edu/~jannat
	Sachi Barnaby Undergraduate Research Assistant I am an undergraduate studying Computer Science at UNM. I work on the GiANTs project that focuses on collaborative transport using robots – wouldn’t it be great if robots could move your furniture? Outside of robots, I enjoy playing oboe in the UNM Orchestra.
	Calvin Stahoviak Research Assistant Masters Student of Computer Science I've had a strong interest in robotics ever since I completed my first mobile base passion project in high school. This passion led me to pursue advanced studies in computer science and join the Moses Biological Computing Lab. During my undergraduate years, I interned at Sandia National Labs where I developed localization and object detection packages for ROS as well as performance testing in Gazebo simulation. My current work primarily focuses on developing robotics solutions for collaborative transport. Outside the lab, I am an avid learner of language, and arts, and enjoy pickup basketball games.
	Humayra Tasnim Research Assistant Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Computer Science Humayra Tasnim is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at the University of New Mexico (UNM). She earned an MS in Computer Science from UNM in 2021. She received both MS and BS in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her research is focused on understanding complex systems, particularly analyzing biological systems and biomedical images. Her research has the potential to significantly contribute to understanding biological phenomena, including the immune response to infections, using novel scientific visualizations. Her research interests include: 1) Computational Biology 2) Information Theory Frameworks 3) Modeling Complex Systems 4) Data Science 5) Image Analysis 6) Scientific and Information Visualization 7) Deep Learning for Images. In addition to academic research experience, she has gained valuable industry exposure through internships at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and Los Alamos National Lab.
	Jake Nichol PhD Student: Department of Computer Science R&D Graduate Intern - Year-round: Sandia National Laboratories, Scientific Machine Learning department Jake is a PhD student studying causal network discovery for complex spatiotemporal systems. In other words, how to find the causes and effects of complex systems that change over space and time, such as the Earth's climate. His work is a part of the CLDERA Sandia National Laboratories Grand Challenge LDRD project that aims to develop tools for climate data science. For example, he is interested in how a volcanic eruption in one place can affect the air, temperature, and other factors in different areas. He develops methods that can capture the local changes of these variables as they move across the globe. Jake's research will help us understand how the Earth behaves and how we can respond to it.
	Karlie Powell Undergraduate Research Assistant Karlie is an undergraduate studying Computer Science at UNM. She is currently working as an intern on the simReef project. Her work focuses on observing how fish interact with coral and translating that into a high-performance computational model. Outside the lab, Karlie likes to read and crochet!
	Kevin Fotso Bioinformatics Technical Analyst Kevin is a Ph.D student in Biomedical Engineering. His Ph.D is in modeling and developing biomarkers that can help understand Multiple Sclerosis disability based on the lesion texture in the Brain. Kevin is also a Bioinformatics Technical Analyst on Alpine, the newest University of Colorado HPC cluster. Kevin was recently selected to go to ATPESC 2023, a scientific computing training at Argonne National laboratory
	Ikechukwu Osode Undergraduate Computer Science Major Algorithmic Justice Project Webpage Developer Ikechukwu(known as Ike) is an undergraduate researcher who is currently building a webpage and engaging in other work for the UNM Algorithmic Justice Project. He has had a strong interest in computer science ever since he took his first AP computer science class in his junior year of high school. Outside the lab, he enjoys playing basketball, going to the gym, and making others laugh.