Erik Erhardt’s SISUS
I’m been doing a little bit of consulting to get Erik Erhardt’s SISUS application working on his website. This has involved integrating Linux, Apache, Apache Tomcat, Perl, R, and various R libraries. The first cut seems to be working, and I’m very excited about it.
SISUS is a Bayesian statistical model and software aiming to provide a comprehensive solution to stable isotope sourcing inference and prediction problems. Erik is a Ph.D. student and statistical consultant that I met in a parallel processing class we both took from Barney Maccabe in the spring of 2006 (CS442).
I can’t claim to understand the statistical underpinnings of what SISUS is doing, but do understand conceptually that it:
- Offers an easy web interface for biologists and other scientists to solve a very interesting problem by simply uploading an input deck via a web interface.
- Does some sophisticated statistical processing using R (I guess that’s the "Stable Isotope Sourcing using Sampling" part).
- Automatically creates publication ready graphs and other results for the user.
This such an incredible idea! If you’re an academic that’s created something new like Erik has, the default is to write a paper that others can use to try and recreate your work. While "the paper" will probably always be required, I think this online SISUS tool represents what successful researchers will want to deliver in the future. That is, the successful academic will say, "My paper is a good reference, but if you want to use or reproduce what I’ve created, just go to my website and access the new knowledge as a service."
Awesome!
Think of the increased number of citations you’ll get by providing an easy web interface to your work vs making someone reproduce everything from scratch. Seems a no-brainer to me.
If you need a solution to stable isotope sourcing inference and prediction problems, check out SISUS, and if you need other statistical consulting contact Erik. He’s wicked smart, and I honestly don’t know another person as dedicated to quality and excellence as he is.