Barrie D. Robison
Professor of Biological Sciences
LAB MEMBERS
About Me: I am a Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Idaho, and the Associate Director for the Institute for Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Studies. My primary research interests at this time are the development of evolutionary video games and the evolution of behaviors governed by artificial neural networks. I am currently recruiting graduate and undergraduate students for these projects. I'm also interested in behavioral evolution and behavioral genomics (primarily in zebrafish), though I'm not currently recruiting students for these projects. I consider myself to be a scientific generalist, and enjoy collaborating with computer scientists, mathematicians, and artists.
GRADUATE STUDENTS
Matt Singer is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Biological Sciences. His research pertains to the evolution of behavior, specifically with regard to animal personalities (such as boldness). He plans to graduate by August of 2016. An avid photographer and naturalist, Matt enjoys the outdoors and living in Idaho. He has presented his research at numerous scientific meetings, including annual meetings of the Society for the Study of Evolution, the Animal Behavior Society, and the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology.
David Streett is an MS student in the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology program. His research interests are diverse, and he is currently exploring several applications of evolutionary computation to biological problems. David's passion is programming, and he is largely self taught in this regard. He is an accomplished bioinformatician and has developed numerous bioinformatics packages, including expHTS, and SuperDeduper. He is also the lead programmer on our Artificial Neural Network project.
Nikolai Levy is an MS student in the Department of Biological Sciences. He is interested in evolution and developmental biology, and is working on a computational simulation of morphological development. Because I don't yet have a picture of him, I offer this rendition of Cthulhu instead.
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
Spencer Gomez is an undergraduate majoring in biochemistry and chemistry. He is working on the artificial neural network project.
Zach Yama is an undergraduate majoring in computer science and mathematics.
Samantha Heck is an undergraduate majoring in computer science.
Kyle Bowlden is an undergraduate majoring in biology.