Achievement

IGERT Associates Hong Li and Allison Kolpas are recent PhD graduates who have worked together to answer the fascinating question: Why do fish school? Hong Li is a computer science researcher and uses the Stochastic Simulation Algorithm (SSA) to capture the inherent randomness of some reactant species in biological systems. Hong addresses the computational demands of the SSA via both faster algorithms and efficient use of high performance computing architectures. Allison is a math researcher whose focus lies in the field of mathematical ecology, with a primary focus on self-organized collective motion of animals groups and the persistence of populations in systems with unidirectional flow. Together, Hong and Allison examined an individual-based model for fish schooling and have implemented the fish schooling model on NVIDA graphics processor units (GPUs). GPUs can be used to efficiently carry out parallel simulations of this model due their low cost and high performance.