Research Blog – Matthew Singer

July 4, 2016July 4, 2016 Matt Research Blog, Travel Stories

July 4 Update and Clara in Spokane

It's been over a month since my last update. There haven't been any major adventures due to time and financial constraints. As I aim to write and finish my dissertation, the time for such outings decreases and thus this summer will be nicknamed "the summer of no fun." Fun isn't completely off the table, but the number and scope of…

July 17, 2013December 13, 2013 Matt Personal Updates, Research Blog

My Research: What I have been up to

Last week, the fruits of my last three year's work has finally come to fruition in the journal PLoS One. The premise is that the personality behavior we call boldness, or the bold-shy continuum, is not only heritable, but a genetically correlated multivariate trait. The research is essentially a continuation of a project Mary Oswald completed for her dissertation, however…

April 15, 2013April 15, 2013 Matt Research Blog

Problem Solving to Victory: RLE

Today I had a sort of "Boo-yah!" moment when I solved a problem I've been working on since the summer. Here's the back story: We've been integrating video tracking into our behavior assays in the lab, and in order to implement this method into research, I have been working with one of the math-bio undergrads on writing R-code to import…

April 26, 2012April 26, 2012 Matt Research Blog, Travel Stories

Evo-WIBO weekend recap

This past weekend, I was in Port Townsend, WA for the bi-annual Evo-WIBO meeting. Evo-WIBO is a small, regional gathering of someo of the biggest names in evolutionary biology in the Pacific northwest. Its only a day and a half long and very informal. Yet, because of its size and intimacy, I got more out of this meeting than I…

December 13, 2011 Matt Research Blog

Of data and formatting

I've been in graduate school now for a year and a half, and I have yet to reveal just what it is I'm working on. Almost immediately coming in, I took over a project originally designed and run by Mary Oswald, the previous doctoral student who had graduated over the summer and left the lab officially at the end of…