User:Cladist

Well, here's a quick description of me. In real Life, my name is Eric Katz. I'm currently working on a PhD in Systematic Theory (see systematics) and Bioinformatics at Kent State, under Gwenn Volkert and Andrea Schwarzbach. It's taking me a while, and no, I don't know when I'll be done. In my spare time (Ha!) I volunteer my professional skills (such as they are) and time on the board of Camp Quest, a camp for Secular Humanist kids. I have also been known to join the Biology Department's faculty in the occasional game of pool at our local watering hole. My interest in the Wikipedia began when I discovered that it is a wonderful source of information, and became interested in how I can help.

You can find most of my edits on the Cladistics page, where I try to remain unbiased, despite being a cladist myself. As far as that is concerned, I learned the basics of Cladistics while studying paleontology at UC Berkeley. There we were taught to beware the scala natura, and shun the frumious phenetics. Currently, I am trying to annoy the dominant paradigm by applying macroevolutionary theory to maximum likelihood phylogenetics.

Update: For various reasons (none of them very good, really), I am no longer at Kent State. However, I am happily living in California, teaching Human Anatomy and Physiology at a couple of local colleges. I still keep an eye on the Cladistics page, but not often. And the username? What the heck; I'll keep it.