Last term I taught a small freshman seminar called “Modeling Life,” on ways of looking at biology through the lens of physical and computational models. It was part of the university’s “Freshman Interest Group” (FIG) program, in which one creates small seminars that connect two regular courses that each student in the FIG takes. This … Continue reading Modeling Life (a freshman seminar) — Part 1
This post is really just an update to the last one, on our recent paper on watching the growth of gut bacterial communities, but I thought I’d post separately that I just learned that we made the cover of mBio. (Or more accurately, the illustration I submitted is the “featured image” for this issue — … Continue reading A bacterial clock
I’ve been reading bits and pieces of Geometry of Design, by Kimberly Elam, which I found randomly on a shelf in our Art and Architecture library. The book has many great examples of design and composition, and thoughts on the wonders of golden rectangles, pentagrams, and other shapes. It devotes a few pages to this … Continue reading Konstructing a poster
The Eighteenth Elephant 