Summary
My name is Craig Fouts :) I am an enthusiastic
scientist/engineer interested in building mathematical
descriptions of living systems in the context of
biomedical data. As a doctoral student in the Biological Control Systems Lab
at Imperial College London, I develop computational
frameworks that characterize minimal design principles
and structural motifs found in stable host-microbiome
ecosystems. Previously, I worked in the New York Genome
Center's Technology Innovation Lab,
where I helped create statistical models and machine
learning tools used to study genomic morphology in
spatial transcriptomics data. Before that, I received my
master's in applied mathematics from Columbia University
after studying computer science and theoretical
mathematics at The Ohio State University. Outside of
research, I enjoy inline skating, playing the violin,
and building cool stuff.
Projects
A compilation of my experiments with self-organizing
systems and emergent behavior. Current methods include a
Brownian motion algorithm, a Vicsek active matter model,
and a branching-and-annihilating random walk. Also a
test bed for RunTime, a framework for building real-time
interactive environments in Jupyter notebooks.
Implementations of semantic segmentation algorithms and
dimension reduction models applied to point cloud data.
Methods include variations of latent Dirichlet
allocation, some amortized topic models, and a neural
clustering process. Also a test bed for ATLAS, an
adaptable topic model for discovering latent anatomical
structures.
The source code for neural particle automata, a
generalization of neural cellular automata to dynamic
point clouds using graph convolutional networks. The
model is trained to parameterize a nonlinear recurrence
relation that, provided an initial "seed" state,
converges to a unique target configuration using local
message propagation.
A knowledge-based web application for robotic access and
retrieval using IBM Watson. The application provides an
interface for textual communication with a Webots
simulation of two robots collaboratively operating a
virtual warehouse. The user can submit queries about the
warehouse's contents as well as request items for
retrieval.
A webcam-based utility designed to provide an accessible
mode of computer interaction for people with impaired
mobility. The user can perform ASL-inspired hand
gestures for 3D control in Autodesk Fusion as well as
general mouse control in Microsoft Windows. Originally
developed for HackOHI/O 2021,
where it won first place.
Research
Ettore Randazzo, Alexander Mordvintsev, and Craig
Fouts (24 - 28 July 2023). Growing Steerable Neural
Cellular Automata. Proceedings of ALIFE 2023.
Alexander Mordvintsev, Ettore Randazzo, and Craig
Fouts (18 - 22 July 2022). Growing Isotropic Neural
Cellular Automata. Proceedings of ALIFE 2022.
Connect