Interested in being my student?

The primary objective of my research is to produce new algorithms and software that can dramatically improve phylogenetic analysis (whether in linguistics or in biology), as tested in simulation or on real data. Theoretical research is often done at the same time, using probability theory to predict performance under Markov models of evolution, but then testing these predictions in simulation. Mathematical modelling is also part of the work. If you are a student who loves to design algorithms, likes the challenge of trying to solve NP-hard optimization problems, loves to program, and enjoys collaborations (especially with scientists!), please contact me! No background in biology or linguistics is required. For an introduction to some research questions in biology, see

An overview of phylogeny reconstruction, by C. Randal Linder and T. Warnow.
Disk Covering Methods: improving the accuracy and speed of large-scale phylogenetic analyses by T. Warnow.
Tutorial on Phylogenetic Tree Estimation by J. Kim and T. Warnow. ISMB 1999.

For the linguistics work, see The Computational Phylogenetics in Historical Linguistics page at Rice University. You may also wish to attend the course on computational phylogenetics in linguistics at NASSLI (Summer School of Logic, Language, and Information) 2012, June 18-22, in Austin.