Carl Davidson 608 E. Miller Ave. Des Moines, IA 50315-2949 (515) 770-2891 [email protected]

Objective

To obtain the knowledge needed to devise new computational methods for analyzing and modeling the environment.

Education

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois Master of Science Degree, expected May 2012 Program: Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Conservation

Simpson College, Indianola, Iowa Bachelor of Arts Degree, May 2010 Majors: Environmental Science, Computer Science GPA: 3.851

Projects Modeling the Effects of Climate Change on the Fire Regimes of Alaskan Tundra September 2010 – present  Modeling the effects of climate change on Alaskan tundra fire regimes using two coupled, state of the art spatial models: the Ecosystem Demography Model (ED) described by Moorcroft et al. (2001), and the Alaskan Frame Based Ecosystem Code (ALFRESCO) described by Rupp et al. (2000).

Spatial Analysis of the Iowa Herpetological Atlas January 2010 – April 2010  Performed spatial analysis techniques on a database of reptile and amphibian specimens collected throughout Iowa.

Text Based Markov Models using a Sequence Alignment Algorithm November 2009 – December 2009  Designed a text based Markov model that joins similar n-grams based upon a sequence alignment algorithm  Presenting work at the 2010 Midwest Instruction and Computing Symposium

Identifying Gene Regulatory Networks using Evolutionary Algorithms September 2008 – May 2009  Implemented a genetic algorithm to generate Bayesian networks representing relationships between the expression of genes in a portion of the human transcriptome  Presenting work for the 2010 Posters on the Hill Event in Washington, D.C.  Presenting work at a 2010 Regional Conference for Computing Sciences in Colleges  Sponsored by the Maytag-McElroy Undergraduate Research Grant

Morphological Variation of Diadophus punctatus in Iowa November 2008 – December 2008  Examined 87 specimens of ring neck snake on a number of morphological traits  Discovered a possible sexual dimorphism in ring sizes of the ring neck snake

Simpson College Footprint Monitor September 2008 – December 2008  Designed a database to monitor data used to calculate the carbon footprint of Simpson College

Course Scheduling with Genetic Algorithms September 2007 – April 2006  Implemented a genetic algorithm to generate course schedules fulfilling college graduation requirements  Presented work at the 2008 Midwest Instruction and Computing Symposium

Employment Research Assistant August 2010 – present University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Michael Dietze Lab  Compiling plant species traits for use as parameters in the Ecosystem Demography Model  Coupling the ALFRESCO and Ecosystem Demography Model

Administrative Intern February 2008 – August 2010 Iowa Department of Natural Resources, Information Technology Bureau  Built and maintained an inventory of all computer applications and databases used by the department  Built a public web application to register participants of a department sponsored wildlife program  Maintained an internal web application used to track software bugs  Migrated and sanitized a database used to track the air emissions of industrial operations across Iowa. The database was migrated from Microsoft Access to Microsoft SQL Server 2005.  Developed an internal application used to manage computer accounts of department staff  Migrated an application used to track permits for fertilizer application. The application was migrated from Java to C#.

Skills

Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 (8 years) Java (4 years) SQL (2 year) C# (2 year) ASP.NET (2 year) HTML (2 year) Python (1 year) GNU/Linux (6 months) Computational Theory (1 semester) Software Engineering (1 semester) ArcGIS (1 semester) R (3 months) SAS (3 months) Perl (3 months) Awards

Simpson College Dean’s List, 2007-2010 Floyd S. Doft Science Award Meritorious Winner of the 2009 COMAP Interdisciplinary Contest in Mathematical Modeling

Publications

“Text Based Markov Models using a Sequence Alignment Algorithm.” Conference Proceedings. Midwest Instruction and Computing Symposium (2010) “Identifying Gene Regulatory Networks using Evolutionary Algorithms.” Conference Proceedings. Conference for Computing Sciences in Colleges (2010): 231-237. “Course Scheduling with Genetic Algorithms.” Conference Proceedings. Midwest Instruction and Computing Symposium (2008): 299-311. References

Lydia Sinapova, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Computer Science, Simpson College (515)961-1841 [email protected]

Marvin Van Wyk, Ph.D. Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science, Simpson College 515-961-1832 [email protected]

Paul Craven, Ph.D. Instructor of Computer Science 515-961-1834 [email protected]