).
Hi! I'm a PhD student within the mighty machine that is
Monash Computer Science; supervised by
Dr. Damian Conway from Computer Science, and
Dr. Rosemary White, a Botanist in the
department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
I'm mainly trying to use Computer techniques to unravel the secrets of the Universe - especially those secrets bound up with Cell Physiology. I'm working on proteins involved in transport within and between cells - how they fit together, and how they are created in the first place.
The proteins responsible for moving things around within a cell form the "cytoskeleton". I'm working on modelling how these proteins form and break apart, which is part of the larger problem of Protein Assembly. I'm also studying how materials move between cells in plants, which means studying plasmodesmata, small tunnels in the cell walls of plants, that allow chemicals to move between adjacent plant cells.
In the past I've also worked on a high-performance, real time
relativity simulator. The system
allows programs such as flight simulators and physics
programs to quickly render what scenes would look like if
things were moving close to the speed of light (If anyone
from Star Trek is listening maybe we should have a chat
about that "going to warpspeed" sequence...
).
I'm also keen on computer graphics - and have spent far too much time fooling around with the Povray raytracer. Among other things I've used it to raytrace biological models, and just for general play images (including the lacework egg that forms the background of this page).