2016 Undergraduate Summer Research Program Participant

Home Department: Mathematical & Computational Science
Supported by: Stanford University Dean of Research Office
Mentor: Noah Rosenberg, Biology

Photo of USRP student Alan Aw in his laboratory, working on a laptop computer.Alan’s research focuses on improving methods for making inferences about evolutionary trees—which appear in many areas of biology, from tracing epidemics to understanding cell lineages in tumors. Specifically, Alan is utilizing probabilistic models and mathematical structures and tools to provide novel insights into the genealogical histories of lineages sampled across closely related species.

Poster presented at the Stanford Bio-X Interdisciplinary Initiatives Symposium on August 24, 2016:

Bounds on the Number of Loci Required for All Splits of a Species Tree to Appear in a Set of Gene Trees

Alan J. Aw1, Rohan S. Mehta2, Lawrence H. Uricchio2, David Bryant3, Noah A. Rosenberg2
[Departments of Mathematical & Computational Science1 and Biology2, Stanford University; Department of Mathematics & Statistics3, University of Otago, New Zealand]