Summary
My name is Craig Fouts :) I'm 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 in silico
methods for inferring structural design principles and
control mechanisms in 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
Some experiments with self-organizing
systems and emergent behavior. Current methods include a
Brownian motion algorithm, a Vicsek active matter model,
and a branching-annihilating random walk. Also a
test bed for RunTime, a framework for building real-time
interactive environments in Jupyter notebooks.
Semantic segmentation models and dimension reduction
algorithms applied to point cloud data. Current methods
include variations of latent Dirichlet allocation, some
amortized topic models, and a neural clustering process.
Also a test bed for ATLAS, a nonparametric topic model
for discovering spatial structures.
Experiments with generalizing neural cellular automata
(NCA) 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 in finite time to a unique
target configuration via local message propagation.
A knowledge-based web application for robotic access and
retrieval using IBM Watson. Provides an interface for
textual communication with a Webots simulation of two
robots collaboratively operating a virtual warehouse.
Users can query the warehouse's contents via the app
and submit items for deposit/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 and general
mouse control in Microsoft Windows. Created 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