Spencer Thomas

Work Address:	UM Digital Library Project
		School of Information and Library Studies
		312 W. Engineering Bldg, Box 1092
		Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Phone:		313-764-5099
FAX:		313-764-2475

Who am I?

I am a staff programmer for the U of Michigan Digital Library project. I am also coordinating the JStor project, a pilot funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to provide electronic access to core journals in history and economics.

My research interests center on the use of visualization to aid in the understanding, exploration, and interpretation of raw and derived data and information. For example, I've worked on the contig assembly problem for physical mapping -- determining the correct ordering and overlap of genomic clones from STS content and hybridization data. I've developed an interactive graphical tool that lets the user easily reorder clones and probes to quickly find a plausible ordering.

I've also been working with Elke Rundensteiner of the EECS department and her student Amy Lee on a data model and set of rules for automatically ordering clones according to experimental data. (Several references will be inserted here).

Hobbies

In my spare time, I read, play with my 4 year old twins, and make beer. My wife and I used to do a lot of remodeling, but since the kids were born, that's slowed down significantly. We've been adding a deck to our house over the last two years.