Alan Hastings started working in mathematical and theoretical ecology as a student at Cornell University where he received his BS in Mathematics 1973 and his PhD in Applied Mathematics in 1977. After two years on the faculty at Washington State University, he joined the faculty at the University of California, Davis, where he is currently a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy. He served as department chair from 1992-1998.
Alan Hastings
His research focuses on the use of theoretical and mathematical approaches to understand a broad range of questions in ecology, with an emphasis on the role of space and other forms of structure. He has worked on problems ranging from the dynamics of food webs to the roles of both dispersal and complex dynamics in shaping ecological dynamics to more applied questions including the management of invasive species and the development of marine protected areas. Recent work has emphasized the interface between ecology and economics, using ideas from statistical physics to understand spatial population dynamics, understanding regime shifts, and laboratory experiments with flour beetles to investigate stochascity and spatial population dynamics. Using theoretical approaches as a way to guide management of ecological systems is a particular interest.
He was the president of SMB from 2001-2002, served as chair of the advisory board for NIMBioS and is on the scientific advisory committee for MBI. He was co-editor in chief of the Journal of Mathematical Biology from 1995 to 2008, is the founding editor in chief of Theoretical Ecology, and is on the editorial board of PNAS. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, SIAM, the Ecological Society of America, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received the Robert H. MacArthur Award from the Ecological Society of America in 2006. More details can be found at two.ucdavis.edu/~me/
Reinhard Laubenbacher
Reinhard Laubenbacher began his career as an algebraist, including work in computational algebra. Subsequently, he conducted research in algebraic combinatorics and its application to the analysis of socio-technical networks. He also worked in the history of mathematics, and co-authored two books and several research articles in this field. Starting around 2000, he turned his attention to research in mathematical systems biology and moved from New Mexico State University to the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech.
In 2013, he took a position at the University of Connecticut Health Center, as the founding director of the Center for Quantitative Medicine, with a tenured position in the School of Medicine Cell Biology Department. He also holds a faculty position at the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine. Throughout his career, he has been involved in educational projects, ranging from K-12 to the graduate level. Of particular interest to him is the inclusion of members from underrepresented groups in the research enterprise. He has served as Vice President for Science Policy for SIAM, and is a fellow of the American Mathematical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. More details can be found at facultydirectory.uchc.edu/profile?profileId=Laubenbacher-Reinhard