Research Interests: In keeping with my interdisciplinary educational background in biology, computer science, and environmental engineering, my research interests involve computational forward and inverse modeling and analysis of complex biological and environmental problems.  Most of my early research has focused on developing novel computational methods for large-scale, nonlinear, multi-scale tomographic inverse image reconstruction problems in subsurface hydrology, geophysics, and deep-tissue near-infrared fluorescence imaging.  However, in the past several years I have shifted my research towards modeling and analysis of complex adaptive systems.  Current or recent projects include developing, studying, and using novel bio-inspired computational approaches for a wide range of important problems, including plant species’ invasiveness in ecological communities, biological speciation, the impact of spatial topologies on information flow through complex interaction networks, identifying nonlinear interactions between single nucleotide polymorphisms that predispose for complex disease traits, agent-based integrated assessment modeling of transportation energy alternatives, analyzing non-linearly interacting outages that cause cascading failures in electrical networks, studying the evolution, structure, and function of a world-wide network of neonatal intensive care units, and exploring the effectiveness of alternative search strageties used by hospital teams in seeking improvements in health care.  In a more general sense, I'm interested in understanding evolution and evolvability and emergent properties of dynamical processes on complex networks. 

I was founding director of the UVM Complex Systems Center from 2006-2010 and in 2010 I led the working group that wrote the successful proposal to create Complex Systems as a UVM-wide Spire of Excellence as part of the UVM Transciplinary Research Initiative.

Please visit my CV for a complete list of publications, including pdfs of most of the journal pubs.

hip stuff

Personal Interests: 

Martial Arts (Northern Shaolin Praying-Mantis Kung Fu (since 1996; black sash attained 12/14/02), Yin style Ba Gua Zhang (since 1996), Tae Kwon Do (since 1991; 3rd degree WTF black belt attained 6/10/00)), rock-hounding (gem and mineral collecting), perennial gardening, hiking, snowshoeing, camping, sewing and related crafts, and of course my wonderful family, including husband Peter and sons Stuart (1983) and Daniel (1988), my cats, and lots of other things!

Here are some poems I wrote in 2nd grade that I recently rediscovered -- they're certainly better than anything I've written since!

This is me practicing with my bagua saber -- yes, it really is as big (and heavy) as it looks!

My mom's (Dorothy Eppstein)'s memories about building the Eppstein Frank Lloyd Wright House.