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

• Projects of Zack Booth Simpson Blog

• 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.