Predicting how ephemeral, highly variable interactions at the level of individuals drive dynamics at the scale of populations presents a fundametal challenge to population biology. Currently, our analytical and computational work invokes principles developed in statistical physics as a conceptual framework linking spatially localized ecological processes to the dynamics of entire populations and the consequent generation of landscape complexity. We emphsize the physical theory of nucleation in studying spatially structured growth, and have advanced a set of scaling relationships to intergate theories for spatially propagating fronts. Particuar applications include models for
    (1) the spatial dynamics of ecological invasion under biotic resistance,
    (2) the adaptive dynamics of reproductive effort in a spatially competitive system, and
    (3) the evolution of disease virulence under spatially structured disease transmission.

I am forunate to collaborate with Dr. Gyorgy Korniss, Department of Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and
Dr. Ing-Nang Wang, Department of Biological Sciences, UAlbany.