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Professor of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
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Brian Blais is a Professor in the Department of Biological and Biomedical Sciences at 麻豆影音. He received his B.A. in Physics from Wesleyan University studying the thermal-emission properties of insulators. He then proceeded to Brown University to obtain a PhD in Physics, where he studied under Nobel Laureate Dr. Leon Cooper on the topic of computational neuroscience. He teaches and publishes in such diverse areas as computational neuroscience, treatments for amblyopia, epidemic modeling, statistical inference, paleoclimate, and the statistics of ancient texts. His interests surround the quantification of the dynamics of systems and their uncertainty. He maintains his blog, bblais on the web, at http://bblais.github.io where he explores the intersection of science and society.
He has a particular interest in statistical inference, as it applies to dynamical modeling especially as it applies to every-day decisions.
Ph D, Brown University
Sc M, Brown University
BA, Wesleyan University
Gregor, K.,Blais, B., Is Name Popularity a Good Test of Historicity? A Statistical Evaluation of Richard Bauckham's Onomastic Argument, Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, 2023.
Squadrani, L.,Curti, N.,Giampieri, E.,Remondini, D.,Blais, B.,Castellani, G., Effectiveness of biological inspired neural network models in learning and patterns memorization., Entropy, 2022.
Castellani, G.,Cooper, L.,Blais, B., Energy consumption and entropy production in a stochastic formulation of BCM learning, Journal of Computational Biology , 2021.
Blais, B., Molecular fossils from phytoplankton reveal secular pCO2 trend over the Phanerozoic, Science Advances, 2018.
Blais, B., Statistical Inference for Everyone, , 2014.
Skaza, J.,Blais, B., The Relationship between Economic Growth and Environmental Degradation: Exploring Models and Questioning the Existence of an Environmental Kuznets Curve, Working Paper Series at the Center for Global and Regional Economic Studies, 2013.
Witkowski, C.,Blais, B., Bayesian analysis of epidemics - zombies, influenza, and other diseases, arxiv.org, 2013.
Yang, H.,Blais, B.,Leng, Q., Stable isotope variations from cultivated Metasequoia trees in the United States: A statistical approach to assess isotope signatures as climate signals, Japanese Journal of Historical Botany, 2011.
Witkowski, C.,Blais, B.,Feng, L.,Reid, C.,Wang, H.,Yang, H.,Leng, Q., Decay and early diagenesis of Metasequoia leaves: Implications for three-dimensional preservation and bulk isotope signals in plant fossil lagerst盲tten, 49th Annual Meeting of the Northeastern Section of the Geological Society of America (GSA) Abstracts with Programs, 2014.
Blais, B.,Gannon, C.,Patalano, R.,Yang, H.,Leng, Q., Bayesian parameter estimation in a 1D model of precipitation and evaporation: comparison of Middle Miocene and modern climates using plant lipid deuterium (未D) measurements, 2013 Geological Society of America (GSA) Annual Meeting, Abstracts with Programs, 2013.
Gannon, C.,Blais, B.,Patalano, R.,Yang, H.,Leng, Q., Understanding the Middle Miocene climatic optimum: evaluation of deuterium values 飦 related to precipitation and temperature, 2013 Geological Society of America (GSA) Annual Meeting, Abstracts with Programs, 2012.
Blais, B., Wrappers, Weight Watchers, and Whitespace: Using Python for Robotics in Education, Submitted paper, 2013.
Blais, B., ScratchNXC, .
Blais, B.,Gregor, K.,Hansen, C., The Prior Probability of Jesus Mythicism Re-evaluated in Light of the Gospels鈥 Dramatic Date., Journal of Early Christian History.
Gregor, K.,Blais, B., Re-Examining Richard Bauckham鈥檚 Argument from Name Popularity in Light of Apocryphal and Talmudic Evidence., Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 2024.
Blais, B., Model Comparison in the Introductory Physics Laboratory, The Physics Teacher, 2020.
Blais, B., A Measure of Faith - Probability in Religious Thought , Kindle Direct Publishing, 2019.
Skaza, J.,Blais, B., Modeling the infectiousness of Twitter hashtags , Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications , 2017.
Skaza, J.,Blais, B., Modeling the Infectiousness of Twitter Hashtags, CoRR, 2016.
Faculty Merit Award, 2024
Faculty Merit Award, 2022
Faculty Merit Award, 2022
Faculty Merit Award, 2018
Summer Stipend, 2015
3-year NSF Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience (CRCNS) grant: ``The synaptic an, 2006
Service Award for exemplary service as a faculty member, 2005
Received Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network (BRIN) grant, as part of a cooperative effort wi, 2001
Geochemical Society
The American Statistical Association
American Association of Physics Teachers
Professor of Biological and Biomedical Sciences