Mission Question: How can humans dance (co-create) with nature?
Two quotes guide my research as I unpack my mission question.
"Nothing in biology (including economies) makes sense except in the light of selection on energy and information processing" (my update on a Theodosius Dobzhansky quote)
"We can afford whatever we can do" (John Maynard Keynes)
The first quote summarizes my intuition of seeing all of our economies as biological systems that use information about multiple pressures and in response differentially allocate energy and matter. This first quote and the intuition are the same as the “whatever we can do” part of the second quote. Thus, “we can afford” builds on the first quote by inspiring me to seek out understanding of finance and, in general, human behavior that shapes what we can do.
Postdoctoral Researcher - Grasselli and Wolkowicz Research Groups, McMaster University
In this postdoctoral position, I am comparing economic systems with ecological systems focusing on energy flows and time delays.
PhD - McCann Laboratory, University of Guelph
Completed September 2023
For my PhD, I examined the resilence of different systems. First, I examined how life history mediates the non-linear mechanism of ratchet effects to amplify variability. I mathematically manipulated the life history of a consumer in a consumer-resource model and added white to red noise perturbations to the consumer’s biomass. I found that slowing the consumer’s life history initially muted variability but when the ratchet effects take hold, variability gets highly amplified. Second, I examined how an economic tipping point (relative profits) impacted the amplification of reddening environmental variability by positive feedbacks and time delays in crop farms. I found that increasing the relative profit of crop farms generally reduced the amplification of reddening environmental variability. Third, I examined how network restructuring in gut bacteria via a bacteriophage genetic reservoir impacted variability. I found that bacteriophage acted as a genetic reservoir to maintain variability and in turn ensure stable gut function.
M.Sc - McCann Laboratory, University of Guelph
Completed August 2018
For my MSc, I quantified the interactions between parasitoids, spruce budworm and other caterpillars in New Brunswick. I found that the parasitoid community exhibited a coherent and indisciminate response to changing relative abundances of spruce budworm and other caterpillars on balsam fir. Furthermore, there was a strong suggestion that the parasitoid community attacks other caterpillars on hardwood trees when spruce budworm are rare.