Research overview:
Our broad research area is applied dynamical systems. I am interested in better understanding problems from diverse applications that involve individuals coming together to create rich, group-level dynamics. Examples of complex systems include cells in animal-skin patterns, voters in political elections, and pedestrians in crowded rooms. From an applied perspective, I develop predictive, experimentally testable models to help address empirical questions. The primary focus of my research in this direction is investigating pigment-cell dynamics in fish-skin patterns, with the goal of helping to identify links between genes, cell behavior, and visible animal characteristics. Alongside my work on fish patterns, complex social systems is a growing focus of my research program. From a mathematical perspective, I am interested in developing approaches for quantifying self-organization and robustly characterizing complex systems models and data.