Research Interests:
My main interests are phylogenetic methods and molecular
evolution. My dissertation is an attempt to use "realistic"
computer simulations to test the performance of methods of phylogenetic
inference. Simulation approaches have been very powerful tools
in systematics, but most of the models of sequence evolution that
have been used are quite simple. I am trying to simulate data
that is more complicated, but not arbitrarily complicated. I am
fitting a very parameter-rich model of sequence evolution to a
huge data set and will use those parameters to generate test data
sets.
In addition to models of sequence evolution I am interested in heuristics that can be used to solve the phylogeny problem. I spend most of my time programming (when I say programming I mean debugging) a software package for model inference and simulation (hopefully I'll be able to extend the program to allow for Bayesian approaches soon).
