Miscellaneous

APS March Meeting 2022 Poster. This poster summarizes the 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 Jones’ thesis (Simplification and control of microbial ecosystems) and also showcases his 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), various information theoretic quantities (e.g. joint entropy H(X,Y), conditional entropy H(Y|X), and the mutual information I(X;Y)) are examined. 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.” This report specifies how to implement boundary conditions in which no leakage occurs with matrix equations for a 1D FPE equation, and explains how this approach can be extended to 2D (and higher-dimensional) FPE equations. Updated 10/6/20.