This includes input distribution selection and sensitivity analysis, efficient procedures for identifying the best of several competing alternatives, and response surface analysis. Simulation of complex discrete-event systems with applications in industrial and service organizations. Underlying probabilistic aspects of simulation and statistical methodology of designing simulation experiments and output interpretation. The understanding and design of practical protocols and representations that lead to effective patterns of emergent behavior in multi-agent systems, with applications in areas such as electronic commerce, digital libraries, and cooperative robotics. Modeling of dynamical systems with emphasis on epidemiological and physiological processes.
Current focus is on the role of the host response in pathogenesis.
Main research tools are deterministic mathematical models, especially bifurcation theory, phase plane analysis, numerical simulations, uncertainty and sensitivity analyses. More specifically, Darwinian medicine and the evolutionary origins of maladaptations, especially depression and the exigencies of the moral passions. This is collaborative work in the Genre Evolution Project, an attempt to test the hypothesis that cultural materials in context, just like biological organisms in ecosystems, evolve as complex adaptive systems. Our test materials are the American science fiction short story of the 20th century. The development of computational models of cultural evolution.