I am an independent research fellow* in the Department of Systems Biology @ HMS, where I study aging, lifespan distributions, and the stochastic biological processes that determine them.  My work focuses on the nematode C. elegans, which is a microscopic creature not so dissimilar to humans as one might expect. C. elegans makes an excellent subject for studying the basic biology of aging--in the laboratory we can run the equivalent of large clinical trials on our nematodes, testing the long-term effects of many different interventions.  When these effects exhibit statistical and mathematical regularities, we can apply ideas from demography, stochastic process theory, and thermodynamics to study the molecular and cellular biology of aging.