E-mail: molsen AT cs DOT umass DOT edu
Advisor: Hava Siegelmann
Lab: BINDS - Biologically Inspired Neural and Dynamical Systems
On June 16, 2011 I defended my PhD dissertation. Starting in the fall of 2011 I will be an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Loyola University Maryland. Please visit my
new website at Loyola for the most recent information.
For the last 6 years I was a
Computer Science PhD candidate at the
University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
I was in Hava Siegelmann's Biocomputation lab, known as BINDS.
I was funded by a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Fellowship from September 2006 through August 2009, was a Google Anita Borg Scholarship winner in 2006, and a Verizon Rising Star Scholarship winner in 2007.
I received my Bachelor's degree from Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State
University (Virginia Tech), in Computer Science in May of 2005.
Research:
My research is inherently interdisciplinary, drawing upon both computational biology and artificial intelligence to a) develop novel computational models of complex biological systems and b) tackle key artificial intelligence research questions by proposing new algorithms and techniques that are inspired by complex biological systems.
In general, complex systems refer to a number of natural and computational systems that generally exhibit emergent behavior, i.e. the behavior of the system is more than just the sum of the behavior of its parts, and may arise through self-organization. For example, computer networks can exhibit emergent behavior.
Probably the best known example is the Internet, a network that is organized without central control but yet still follows a power law in link organization.
Meanwhile, emergent behavior can also be seen in biological systems, including molecular or cellular biology, dynamics of species in ecology, or human behavior. An example is swarm intelligence, which refers to the natural organization of bees, ants, or even flocks of birds without centralized communication.
My work focuses on modeling these types of complex biological systems, and drawing upon ideas from these systems to solve AI problems. Thus far I have provided new approaches to investigating intelligence in biological complex systems and how they can inspire new directions in artificial intelligence. The biological systems that I typically work with are cancer, species interaction, emotions, and human communication.
Teaching:
During Fall 2009 I was the TA for the undergraduate AI class, CS383. For
Spring 2010 I was the grader for the
Digital Forensics class (CS365).
During Fall 2010 I was the TA for undergraduate Usability (UMass) and undergraduate Robotics (Smith College).
Other:
I am currently on the Organizing Committee for the Complex Adaptive Systems Symposium, which is part of the 2011 AAAI Fall Symposium series. I was also recently on the Program Committee for
NESCAI 2010, the North-East Student Colloquium on Artificial Intelligence, held April 16-18, 2010 at UMass Amherst.
This past summer I attended the Santa Fe Institute's
Complex Systems Summer School (SFI CSSS), as well as the
AAAI Doctoral Consortium.
Personal:
My second year living in Amherst some friends of mine and their kids came to visit, leading me to ask my fellow department members where to take them. This lead to a list on
Things to do with Kids in Winter in the Amherst Area. If you are planning to visit Amherst, you might find some great places to visit by looking through it.
