Dr. Emily Dolson

664 Followers
465 Following
458 Posts

Assistant Professor at Michigan State University studying eco-evolutionary dynamics in artificial life, cancer, evolutionary computation, and whatever other systems seem appropriate for the questions I'm asking.

Pronouns: she/her 🏳️‍🌈 

#ArtificialLife #EvolutionaryComputation #MathOnco #Ecology #EvolutionaryBiology #Evolution #EcoEvolutionaryDynamics #BiInSci #OpenSource #OpenScience #linux #Michigan #msu #fedi22

Lab websitehttps://ecodelab.com
My websitehttps://emilyldolson.com
Githubhttps://github.com/emilydolson
"There’s a common misconception that we are committed to decades or centuries more global warming from CO2 already in the atmosphere, no matter what we do now. Happily, current science says this is not true" The great @kimberlynicholas.bsky.social wecanfixit.substack.com/p/when-to-gi...
Prof. Kimberly Nicholas (🐧@ka_nicholas) (@kimberlynicholas.bsky.social)

Climate scientist @lunduniversity. Research: high-impact climate action from 🙋🏻‍♀️to🌎; sustainable food systems; wine; climate education & communication. Newsletter: https://wecanfixit.substack.com Bestselling author: https://bit.ly/3fcf2yT Pod soon!

Bluesky Social
Our new #preprint changes the way we look at an “extinction vortex” in which a small population loses fitness, causing it to become even smaller https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.25.620329v1.
#MutationalMeltdown #EffectivePopulationSize #EvolutionaryRescue #PopulationGenetics #EvolGenPaper @wmawass @jdmatheson @uliseshmc 1/7

Got the best Michigan "I voted" sticker and also carved a jack-o-lantern version of it!

If you haven't already, this is a great time to make a plan for how you're going to vote (including down ballot races) - it may not be sufficient to fix our country, but it is necessary!

#uspol

Perez-Mercader's synthetic chemical system that demonstrates the growth, replication, competition and adaptation of non-living chemical vesicles! 🤯
(Or are they alive already?)
#ALIFE2024 @alifeconf

It really is the return of the ecology blogosphere!

After posting yesterday that we were ramping up the blog again, my RSS feed let me know that arguably the most impactful ecology blog of all time, Dynamic Ecology, was doing the same thing! We also heard from Terry McGlynn who has recently moved and renamed his really important blog, now a newsletter named Science For Everyone. And we heard from multiple other folks that they are in the process of spinning up new…

https://jabberwocky.weecology.org/2024/01/09/it-really-is-the-return-of-the-ecology-blogosphere/

It really is the return of the ecology blogosphere!

After posting yesterday that we were ramping up the blog again, my RSS feed let me know that arguably the most impactful ecology blog of all time, Dynamic Ecology, was doing the same thing! We also…

Jabberwocky Ecology

Planning to start 2024 out right: with Theoden saying "So it begins"

Happy New Year's, everyone!

Twelve Thought-Provoking Papers

On the 12th day of ALife Xmas, the newsletter gave to me: Twelve Thought-Provoking Papers! Here is a selection of ALife papers with a slightly philosophical edge that have (mostly) featured in the Artificial Life journal over the years.

A common refrain is that the web is _turning into_ garbage because of LLMs.

But that's not really true. It's just that the garbage is _drowning out_ everything else, especially in search engines that themselves have decided to go into the garbage generation business.

What can we do? We can promote the #IndieWeb right here. Highlight the good, perhaps obscure websites and blogs you come across, especially the ones that aren't loaded with ads & trackers.

The web is still full of awesomeness.

Fun summertime activities: this week I have mostly been enjoying hanging out with colleagues in Oxford playing with ecosystem engineers in evolutionary simulations.

Orange tips == ecosystem engineers, a novelty which evolved at 4000 iterations (why yes, I did put the grey line in the wrong place)

#nature #science

I'm surprised that #ALIFE2023 is the first time that Ted Chiang was invited to a science conference! Totally agree with his point that the relationship between SciFi and science is really synergistic, and it was really great having him here. I hope we can have more science fiction writers at future conferences!