VCU Bioinformatics and Bioengineering Summer Institute
Virginia Commonwealth University
Picture of Cailin Andruss

Cailin K. Andruss
  Home Institution
  Westmont College
  Santa Barbara, California
  E-mail: candruss@westmont.edu

  Home mentor
  Wayne Iba, Ph.D.
  Computer Science
  E-mail: iba@westmont.edu
VCU Lab
Bioinformatics Computational Core Laboratories
Trani Center for Life Sciences, Room 104
Virtual Parasite Project

VCU mentor
Tarynn M. Witten, Ph.D., MSW, FGSA
Center for the Study of Biological Complexity
E-mail: twitten@vcu.edu

Simulation Video
Virtual Parasite Project Prototype

Online Project Logbook
Paranoid Swarming

Summer 2006
Final research report
Computational Modeling of the Interaction of the T. cruzi Parasite and its Environment

Final research presentation (25 July 2006)
Cruzi Control: Modeling the Interactions of the T. cruzi Parasite With Its Environment

Research article presentation (18 July 2006)
Don't Crowd Me: Summary of and comments on Brogan and Hodgins'
Group Behaviors for Systems with Significant Dynamics

Research proposal
Computational Modeling of T. cruzi Parasite Motion in a Three Dimentional Fluid Cell Culture

Academic Year 2005-2006
Poster presentation (19 April 2006)
10th Annual Westmont College Undergraduate Research Symposium
Computational Modeling of the Movement of the T. cruzi Parasite in a Three Dimensional Environment

Research proposal
Computational Modeling of the Movement of the T. cruzi Parasite in a Three Dimensional Environment

Summer 2005
Research presentation (8 August 2005)
3rd Annual VCU-BBSI Closing Symposium
T. cruzi Meets Wall: Modeling Parasite
Interaction with their Environment


Research article presentation (29 June 2005)
Flying Free: Comments on Craig W. Reynolds'
Flocks, Herds, and Schools: A Distributed
Behavioral Model


Research proposal
Computational Modeling of the Interaction
of the T. cruzi Parasite with Host Cells




Characteristic interests and activities
Psychology, computers (both mac and pc), working as a sound engineer for events, html, drawing, poetry, music

Prior research
Project Mickey: a database program designed to facilitate the storage and analysis of large quantities of scientific data without requiring the knowledge of programming or querying languages.

Home mentor's research interests
  • The Nature of Service
  • Bioinformatics:
  • application of data mining techniques to problems in Biology
  • Ethics in a virtual environment
  • Philosopher's Workbench:
  • exploring philosophical questions through simulated environments and artificial agents
  • Machine Learning:
  • average-case analyses of algorithms
  • Westmont Cluster Project






  • Last updated 2006 August 10th

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