• I have to P

    I have to P

    I get asked frequently by students about career advice. Should they stay in academia or should they look for a job in industry. Most professors have only ever been in academia so their view may be a bit biased. I came to academia through a more indirect route.

  • Trying to not be a hypocrite

    Trying to not be a hypocrite

    At Entelos, a common refrain was that biologist don’t take the right data when it comes to building mechanistic mathematical models of disease. Yet, the company was reluctant to publish primary research articles showing how existing data are used and what kind of data are needed. Over time, this blanket critique of biologists, to me,…

  • [Old Man Yells at Cloud]

    [Old Man Yells at Cloud]

    Creating a mathematical model of disease based on the available literature requires reading a lot of papers. In the 5 years that I was at Entelos, I had read close to 3000 papers.

  • Butterflies and rainbows

    I recently followed my wife to a conference in Denver and I attended a hospitality event. In making casual conversation with someone at the event, the conversation followed the typically script: Casual conversant (CC): “What do you do?”  Me: “I’m a professor” CC: “Oh what in?” Me: “Chemical and Biomedical Engineering” CC scrunches up their…

  • Paper Tales – Klinke DJ PLoS One 2008

    At Entelos, I saw first hand that developing mathematical models of disease requires significant investment before you have a simulation platform that you can market to pharma. These PhysioLab models were complicated and required multiple PhD-level engineers and life scientists working elbow to elbow for 6 months to a year or more before we had…

  • Paper tales – Klinke DJ Journal of Theoretical Biology 2006

    While my graduate work was rule-based modeling of petrochemical-related chemistries, I felt that following graduation I was more interested in applying these computational approaches to biological problems instead of petrochemistry. After a brief post-doc at Sandia National Laboratory in Livermore, I landed a position as a Biosystems Engineer at Entelos, Inc in Menlo Park, California…

  • Kanna Kabinet

    Kanna Kabinet

    In the interest of creating a home for some Japanese kannas that protects them from fluctuations in humidity, I decided to build a small cabinet to fit about 6 kannas for finish planing in the space between the bigger hanging tool chest and a side wall. To tie in the design with the larger cabinet,…

  • Tea box in sweet gum

    Tea box in sweet gum

    In the interest to try full blind dovetails, I decided to make a small box to house some tea packets in a 3 by 1 arrangement. I used a piece of sweetgum rescued from the local municipal dump pile for urban logs. It seems that most of the logs are destined for firewood. However as…