Past Research
- University of Texas at Austin
Dr. Oscar Gonzalez: Department
of Mathematics
- Dynamics of DNA filament in a fluid
The goal of this work was to explore the correlation
between the shape of a closed (or cyclic) DNA filament
and its migration speed in a uid. The basic problem was to determine
how the average migration behavior of a filament
is in uenced by features of its shape. Given a shape, we would like to find bounds on the migration speed. Conversely,
given a speed, we would like to characterize the possible shapes.
Phylo Lab: Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
- Computational Phylogenetics
A phylogenetic network is a model used to describe the evolution
of a set of species with cross-species interaction. We studied
the theory of triangulated graphs to understand how they could be
applied to solve the Character Compatibility Problem on
phylogenetic networks.
- NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Computational Sciences Division: Smart Systems Research Lab
- Breast Cancer Diagnostics
This project was for the development of a non-surgical system for detection of breast
cancer
(with specific application aboard the International Space Station).
I designed a non-invasive diagnostic system that performed real-time image processing on results
from an ultrasound monitor. Experiments were performed on tumored mice
for optimization of the system.
- Space Shuttle Docking
Performed research for application of an automated docking system for the US Space Shuttle by studying
shuttle systems and data provided by them; performed research on sensor fusion/data mining techniques (e.g. Kalman
filtering); assisted in development of a data mining/data visualization tool for application to the International
Space Station.
Aviation Systems Research & Technology Division: Center-TRACON Automation System Group
- Optimized Trajectories ("EGADS")
Solely responsible for design and development of an error analysis tool that assists in the optimization
of airplane trajectory predictions to be used for a suite of software tools (CTAS) for air traffic control (ATC) and
flight management (FMS). Experience with software design issues, aeronautics and ATC problems, C, Matlab, Unix shell
scripts.
Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA.
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
- Senior Honors Thesis with Professor Glenn Appleby and Nicholas Tran
Genome Rearrangements and Sorting by Reversals
Abstract
- Numerical PDEs with Professor Dan Ostrov
Assisted research by computing numerical solutions of first-order nonlinear partial differential
equations. These (Hamilton-Jacobi) equations were applied to photographic shape-from-shading (reconstructing a 3D
surface based on a black+white photo of the surface) for discontinuous images.
- Function Visualization with Professor Frank Farris
Contributed with some basic development work to assist with the visualization of complex-valued functions
in the plane using domain-coloring diagrams (each pixel in a domain is colored according to the output value of the
function at that point in the domain).
- Computational Phylogenetics with Professor Nicolas Tran
Assisted research on finding a polynomial time method, using a randomized algorithm, for the
sorting-by-reversals (SBR) problem that has applications in computational molecular biology.