Miscellaneous

Errata. Corrections to previously published work. Updated 8/15/23.

APS March Meeting 2022 Poster. This poster summarizes my paper “Stochastic microbiome assembly depends on context,’’ published in PNAS here. Updated 3/18/22.

The SmartToilet: “Dr. John” is the gateway to personalized medicine. First place winner of the SFU Postdoc Research Day Writing for the Public Contest. A 250-word research summary prepared for “casual science communication pieces for newspapers, magazine articles, blogs, and more for public audiences.” Updated 3/31/21.

SFU Postdoc Research Day 2021 Poster. This poster summarizes the theoretical aspects of my thesis (Simplification and control of microbial ecosystems) and also showcases new postdoctoral work studying the role of noise in ecological systems. Updated 3/31/21.

Learning information theory with hangman. For a game of hangman with a three-letter word, in which X is the probability space of the first letter (26 elements) and Y is the probability space of the last two leters (26^2 elements), I consider various information theoretic quantities (e.g. joint entropy H(X,Y), conditional entropy H(Y|X), and the mutual information I(X;Y)). Updated 11/26/20.

Implementation of artificial boundary conditions in simulations of the 1D and 2D Fokker-Planck equations. The Fokker-Planck equation (FPE) describes the time-evolution of a probability distribution subject to deterministic drift and stochastic diffusion. Simulating this partial differential equation on a grid requires some care, especially at the boundaries, to ensure no probability “leaks out.” Here I explicitly report how to properly implement boundary conditions to ensure that no leakage occurs with matrix equations for a 1D FPE equation, and qualitatively explain how this approach may be extended to 2D (and higher-dimensional) FPE equations. Updated 10/6/20.