Jeffrey O. Pfaffmann

Recent Ph.D. Graduate

Welcome to my web presence! What you see is the web site of Jeff Pfaffmann, recent graduate of the Department of Computer Science at Wayne State University. From Wayne I have earned a Masters of Science and a Doctorate of Philosophy, both with a major in Computer Science.

While at Wayne I was a student of of Dr. Michael Conrad's and a member of his BioComputing Group. To paraphrase the group's web site, the Biocomputing Group examines information processing in biological and biomolecular systems through the tools of computer science to create models for evaluating various hypotheses about these systems. The ultimate goal is to determine the principles of biological information processing so that capabilities of natural systems can be conferred to artificially created computational devices.

In the future I seek to stay in the same vein but with a slightly different spin. My broad goal is bridge the two fields of Machine Learning and Cell Biology to produce novel models that capture the distributed control mechanisms of the cell. As a result, these models will produce new methods of control for systems of distributed devices that have a high degree of interaction, or context-sensitivity. This work will have a great theoretical impact, but will also be applicable to an applied context, such as, large arrays of silicon devices with special requirements, e.g., wireless sensor networks.