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Christopher R

- Research Program Mentor

PhD Doctor of Philosophy candidate

Expertise

Bioinformatics and Computational Biology; Computational Modelling; Biology of Aging

Project ideas

Project ideas are meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.

A Safer World

The life expectancy of people in the modern world is almost double what it was a century ago. What drove this massive increase? What are the differences in lifespan between countries? Will lifespan continue to increase? This project will explore why humans today are some of the healthiest in history and what can be done to make the world even safer tomorrow. We will look at the amazing technologies that lengthened lives in the 20th century, as well as the tragic events that shortened them. We will also analyze the sources of mortality which plague us most heavily today, and how scientific and industrial development can combat them. At the end of this project, I will help you create visualizations of the data you have gathered about mortality and life expectancy. We can either use d3 or R (or any other software you would like to learn) to create graphs of lifespan across the world and throughout the century. I will also help you present data from government organizations on predictions for lifespan in the 21st century. We can also analyze mortality causes and magnitudes to identify promising targets for improving the health and safety of human beings in the future. Image: COVID-19 vaccine distribution in Narok, Kenya. Credit: Baz Ratner / REUTERS

Coding skills

Python, Mathematica, MatLab, Java, C#, C++, BASH, R, PHP, JavaScript

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