December 22, 2024

EagleEye

A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff

Crawford, Davies and Griffith Publish Ecological Model in International Journal

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Stephen Davies, associate professor of computer science, Alan Griffith, professor of biological science and Michael Crawford from the class of 2014, published their  modeling research article, titled “Predicting metapopulation responses of a tidal wetland annual to environmental stochasticity and water dispersal through an individual-based model.”

The article currently appears in the journal “Ecological Modelling” online and will appear in print in November. The article can be viewed here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380015003828

Davies, Griffith and Crawford’s interdisciplinary project involved constructing a computer replica of the rare plant Sensitive Joint-Vetch in its native habitat – Virginia coastal wetlands. This detailed model was then simulated to make predictions about the plant’s population dynamics in response to various environmental factors.

Toth and Student Publish in Journal of Computational Science Education

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Dave Toth, assistant professor of computer science, and Mike Crawford, a student in Toth’s parallel computing class last fall, published a paper in the Journal of Computational Science Education. The paper, “Parallelization of the Knapsack Problem as an Introductory Experience in Parallel Computing,” describes both Crawford’s and Toth’s experiences with and reflections about the eight-week course project. The project included each student in the course writing a parallel program and running it on one of the 50 fastest supercomputers in the world.