Zack Booth Simpson
I am a software engineer, artist, and molecular biology researcher living in Austin, Texas.
Contact
Brief Professional History
- 1987 Dropped out of high-school
- 1987 - 1991 Quality Assurance lead on a visual database programming language
- 1991 - 1992 Software Engineer on the RPG video games Ultima VII and Ultima VIII at Origin Systems (a subsidiary of Electronic Arts)
- 1993 - 1995 Director of Technology at Origin during which time I was very involved with the conversion from DOS to Windows, the emergence of Origin's internet strategy, and managed the prototype of Ultima Online
- 1995 - 1998 Co-founder of Titanic Entertainment which made one game: Netstorm later voted by C-Net as "The best game of all time that nobody bought"!
- 1998 - 1999 Research Fellow for Electronic Arts. Among my research projects was the first paper written on the in-game economics of a MMORPG
- 1999 - 2020 Founder, President, principle artist of Mine-Control; we created dozens of interactive full-body exhibits for museums and other institutions world-wide
- 2000 - 2001 Contributor, La Fura dels Baus which is a theater company in Barcelona Spain that specializaes in large-scale outdoor prodctions (while living in Barcelona)
- 2003 - present In 2003 I began lurking in various molecular biology labs at UT, Austin. In 2005 I officially became a Research Fellow in the Center for Systems and Synthetic Biology. I have engaged in many diverse projects ranging from molecular kinetics to biological amorphous computing
- 2008 - 2010 Co-founder of Traitwise, a medical survey technology to sample the human phenotype
- 2011 - 2014 Co-founder and principle architect of Appsoma, a development platform for scientifically-oriented problems
- 2013 - 2015 Co-founder of CounterPAC a political organization using game theory to attempt to alter the behavior of spending in elections
- 2017 - 2022 Co-founder, VP of Software, Erisyon, a technology for single-molecule protein sequencing.
- 2022 - present. Founder, President of Fabricans, a technology for artistic wood cutting.
Papers
A microbial model of economic trading and comparative advantage, co-author; 2015, Journal of Theoretical Biology doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2014.09.030
DEAD-Box Helicase Proteins Disrupt RNA Tertiary Structure Through Helix Capture, co-author; 2014, PLOS Biology DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001981
Modeling Scalable Pattern Generation in DNA Reaction Networks, co-author; 2013, Artificial Life December 2014, Volume 13, Issue 4, pp 583-595
Pattern transformation with DNA circuits, co-author; 2013 Nature Chemistry doi:10.1038/nchem.1764
Fitspace Explorer, co-author; 2009, Analytical Biochemistry doi:10.1016/j.ab.2008.12.025
Global Kinetic Explorer, co-author; 2009, Analytical Biochemistry doi:10.1016/j.ab.2008.12.024
Modelling Amporphous Computations with Transcription Networks, co-author; 2009, Royal Society Interface doi:10.1098/rsif.2009.0014.focus
A synthetic genetic edge detection program, co-author; 2009, Cell doi:10.1016/j.cell.2009.04.048
Parasitism and protocells: The Tragedy of the Molecular Commons, co-author; 2008, Protocells MIT Press, ISBN 978-0262182683
Engineering stochasticity in gene expression, co-author; 2008, Molecular Bio Systems, doi:10.1039/b801245h
SIGGRAPH 2006 Art Gallery (Moderation)
Synthetic biology: Engineering Escherichia Coli to see light, co-author; 2005, Nature, doi:10.1038/nature04405
The In-Game Economics of Ultima Online; 2000, The Computer Game Developer's Conference San Jose, CA; 2005, Game Creation Magazine, Vol 1, No 1. CMP Media, China
SIGGRAPH 2004 Art Gallery (Calder, Mondriaan, Interference)
SIGGRAPH 2002 Art Gallery (Sand, Butterfly, Flower Garden, Molecular Bubbles, Fish)
Vented CMOS, co-author; 2002, US Patent 6,420,905
A Stream-based Time Synchronization Technique For Networked Computer Games, co-author; 2002 Game Gems III ISBN: 978-1584502333
Game Patterns & Idioms, co-author; 2000 - 2001, Column in Game Developer Magazine
Energetics In Phonetics, co-author; 1999, Proceedings of the Speech Communication and Language Development Symposium
Other Work and Links of Interest
Linear Algebra; 2014, A "Colorful Introduction" to linear algebra.
Complex Numbers and Fourier Analysis; 2014, A "Colorful Introduction" to complex numbers and Fourier Analysis.
On Signal and Noise; 2014, A "Colorful Introduction" to signal, noise, variance, and PCA.
An Artist Develops a New Image -- With Aid of Bacteria by Mitch Leslie; 2008, Science
Painting Bus Lines Directly onto Streets; 2007, A proposal for improving bus lines by painting them onto streets.
Word Frequency Analysis of Literature in Project Gutenberg; 2000, A statistical analysis of about 2000 literary works from the Project Gutenberg. Compares book vocabulary densities and isolates anomalous word usage.
The In-Game Economics of Ultima Online; 1999, Probably the first serious look at the in-game economics of a virtual world.
Understanding Transistors Through Pneumatic Analogy; 1999, College of Electrical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin. Lecture notes from a lesson I gave to an undergraduate circuit design class. Explains the function of transistors by drawing an analogy to pneumatics.
Results From Junior High Engineering Contest; 1998. St. Andrew's Episcopal School; Austin, TX. In 1998, my friend and I created an engineering contest for students at our former junior-high. It was great fun. This paper summarizes a few of the contests and the results.
A Proposal To Stop Unwanted Commercial Solicitation; 1998, Unpublished. Proposes a method to stop unwanted e-mail and phone solicitations using escrowed payments.