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Welcome
Welcome to the web site for the Quantitative Biology and Epidemiology (QBE, “cube”) research group of the Plant Pathology Department at UC Davis.
QBE's values
QBE is an inclusive and collaborative place. We reject all forms of discrimination based on gender identity, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, physical ability, and race. We strive to secure equitable pay for research group members, to prioritize work-life balance and flexibility, and to encourage skill building and cross-disciplinary exploration. We work together, recognizing our many differences, to create a mutually supportive, safe and happy working environment, grounded in the principle of inherent equality among all people.
As a research group, our work is often used to inform public policy and support decision making. We take seriously our responsibility to sift fact from fallacy when building tools for the public and for decision makers. We acknowledge that as humans we each have our own biases and strive to understand and reduce their impact on our work. We also acknowledge that our work can be contextualized or applied in politicized environments, and seriously consider how best to communicate information to all audiences. We will not hesitate to enter political discourse if our work is misused or misrepresented.
Our work in outline
In the cube group we are interested in understanding how plant disease epidemics, and many other phenomena, arise out of the interactions between people, agriculture, the environment, and wider ecosystems. Wherever possible, we express relationships among these components quantitatively, but we utilize a wide range of quantitative and qualitative techniques in order to combine information from different domains into models.
The Long Narrow Swale: Thoughts on interdisciplinary research
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The Rumsfeld filter
It is well over a year since the first post on this blog. I had intended it to be monthly or maybe happen once every two months. Ah well, most of the time that I wasn't spending writing blogs I was sciencing, so I'll let myself off the...
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"Science is Sciencing"
The title for this post is stolen from a 1938 essay by the anthropologist Leslie A. White. The essay - a reflection on the complex, interconnected phenomena that science attempts to interpret, and the resulting need for traditional artificial...