External Faculty Profile
Name of Interviewee
Elizabeth Bradley, Professor of Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Systems & Control.
1. How did you first get involved with SFI?
I do not remember how I got involved with SFI. Melanie & I were trying to figure that out the last time I was down there to visit but we struck out. I do know that I've been on the external faculty since 1999 and that I've taught at the CSSS every summer since then (with the exception of COVID years, of course). It was a natural connection, since my work in the area of nonlinear dynamics and chaos: areas where SFI people led the way.
2. What does SFI mean to you?
SFI is scientific utopia: a lovely place full of amazing people who are smart, nice, and deeply interested in interaction. The infrastructure, beginning with the staff, is perfectly crafted to support the mission of supple, productive, interdisciplinary communication and collaboration. When I drive down from Boulder and come across Raton Pass, I start anticipating walking through the SFI front doors and seeing old friends.
3. How have you been involved with SFI recently?
As I write this, I'm flying home from a productive week-long visit that combined a planned research collaboration and serendipitous connections. There's teaching at the CSSS, of course, and I just rotated off the Science Board this year after more than a decade. One of my long-term projects has been helping build the connective tissue between SFI and CU-Boulder, which is now substantial and bidirectional. Indeed, we sometimes refer to ourselves as "SFI North." Our faculty includes at least three people who came from SFI postdocs, for instance, and a number of our students have gone on to SFI postdoc positions.
4. What are you working on now?
Lots of crazy stuff! My students and I have been using topological data analysis to detect and characterize structure in various kinds of scientific data: bacteria swarms, honeybee colonies (with External Faculty member Orit Peleg from CU-Boulder), and circumstellar disks, where those structures can be signatures of exoplanet formation. One of my other students is building a multiphysics model of droplet formation in the vocal tract and validating it against experimental data; another is thinking about how to use Koopman theory to model the growth of algal blooms in lakes. I also spent a lot of time in the past year helping organize a Focus Issue of the journal CHAOS in honor of the 80th birthday of David K. Campbell, a longtime Science Board member (and Geoffrey West's very first postdoc).