Research

I am interested in applications of combinatorics and computational geometry to computational biology, bioinformatics, computer science, and communication theory. I am currently developing an efficient algorithm for computing the geodesic distance between two phylogenetic trees that was introduced by Billera, Holmes and Vogtmann (2001).

My research statement contains a high-level description of my research and research interests.

If you are interested in knowing when the Java implementation of my algorithm will be available, please contact me.

My advisor is Louis Billera.

The MathTrek blog at Science News had a post about this space of phylogenetic tree and the geodesic distance.

Posters

Computing Distance in the Space of Phylogenetic Trees, AWM Workshop for Women Graduate Students and Recent PhDs, Joint Mathematics Meeting (JMM), San Diego, January 2008.

Conference and Workshop Talks

Practical Distance Computation in the Space of Phylogenetic Trees to be presented at the Future Directions in Phylogenetic Methods and Models workshop, Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge, UK, Dec. 2007 [abstract][talk]
Linear Algorithm for Shortest Path Through Select Orthants to be presented at the 17th Fall Workshop on Computational and Combinatorial Geometry (FWCG), Hawthorne, NY, Nov. 2007 [2-page abstract]
Computing the Distance Between Phylogenetic Trees at Graduate Student Combinatorics Conference 2007 (GSCC07), University of Washington, Seattle, April 2007