Awards

Education

• B.S., Physics/Math California Institute of Technology, 1987
• Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin, 1993

Research

I work in areas of complex systems, with emphasis on statistical and evolutionary origins of order and the Origin of Life. Topics include non-equilibrium stochastic processes and their associated information theory, connections and continuities between biochemistry and early-Earth surface organic geochemistry, the origin and evolution of hierarchical order in life including the translation system, genetic code, and the major biopolymers (proteins, RNA, and sugars), and system views of causation as these relate to chance and necessity. 

My more technical interests include the application of entropy and information to histories and not only to states, the geometric picture of information spaces, and rule-based approaches to computational chemistry to explore large combinatorial reaction systems. The common theme in all of these is putting states and processes on an equal footing as the carriers of pattern and order. I hope that in the next generation of work we will be able to frame questions about the Origin of Life and its Major Transitions quantitatively, and to recognize which aspects of our biosphere can be predicted in specific forms from first principles.

Research Keywords

Non-equilibrium stochastic processes, Large-deviation theory, Information geometry, Stoichiometric systems, Graph-grammars, Rule-based modeling.