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John R. Jungck

Biological Sciences

John R. Jungck

Professor
jungck@udel.edu
 302-831-4041

Office: 118 Harker ISE Lab
Lab: 409 ISE Lab

Resources and Links

John Jungck's Google Scholar Publications

Education

  • B.S. - University of Minnesota: Biochemistry and Mathematics
  • M.S. - University of Minnesota: Genetics, Microbiology
  • Ph.D. - University of Miami: Evolution, Molecular and Cellular Biology
  • D.Sc. honoris causa - University of Minnesota

Teaching

  • BISC 467: Evolutionary Bioinformatics
  • HONORS: East:West
  • HONORS: Ethnomathematics: Art, Culture, and Social Justice
  • MALS: East: West
  • MALS: Bauhaus, Bucky, and Black Mountain College: Designing Futures

Research Interests

I am a theoretical biologist who specializes in molecular evolution, evolutionary bioinformatics, image analysis, and mathematical biology education. My interests are deeply involved with various aspects of promoting interdisciplinary work: science, technology, and society; history, philosophy, and social studies of biology; art and science (STEAM – putting art in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics); numeracy (quantitative reasoning); Citizen Science and Participatory Democracy; international collaboration (International Union of Biological Sciences); mathematics and science education (PBL, collaborative learning, open ended investigations, strategic simulations for learning long-term strategies of research, problem solving, interdisciplinary education, progressive cyberlearning); and, promoting diversity and student retention. I was the co-founder of the BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium.

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Many of the computer software packages that I have co-developed are available through that website. Much of my career has included serving the community as an editor of journals that range from the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, Evolutionary Bioinformatics, and BioSystems to Biology International, Bioscene: Journal of College Biology Teaching, the American Biology Teacher, and the American Journal of Undergraduate Research.

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Current Projects

Professor Jungck is currently focusing on completing two books: “A BioGraphy of Life: Modeling Biology with Dots and Lines” and “Math Saves Lives: Cancer and Evolution” As well as co-editing a special issue of the Bulletin of Mathematical Biologythat will appear in 2020. His research on topological analysis of 3D nanotomorgapghic images of radiolaria with Professor Wagner continues as does his work on 4D printing (self-asssembly) of viral capsid models with mathematics Professor Hannah Hignlander at the University of Portland.

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Image analysis of cell division of Drosophila melaganaster and Arabidopsis thaliana with computational geometry (Voronoi tessellations), graph theory (Delaunay triangulations, Pitteway violoations, minimal spanning trees, nearest neighbor networks, Ulam trees, Eulerian circuits, Hamiltonian pathways, DeBruijn graphs), and spatial statistics. We are also looking at polygonal tessellations on polyherdral radiolarians. Much of this work involves scientific visualization via 3D microscopy, 3D scanning, 3D and 4D printing, and 3D projection.

Phylogenetic tree and network analysis of the evolution of protein targets of anti-cancer drugs and the general problem of the evolution of resistance to cancer chemotherapy. Much of this work involves bioinformatics data mining of large complex data bases and developing software for testing evolutionary hypotheses (split decomposition, new metrics for scoring multiple sequence alignments based on Hamiltonian distances of 4D hypercube representations  of genetic coding, matrix algebra analyses of gene expression data, interval graph analyses for motif detection and transitivity ordering in systems biology, combinatorics of genome rearrangements, and network visualization).

Graph theoretic analysis of food webs via community ecology analysis of niche space, trophic levels, and energy flux.

Development of computer simulations called strategic simulations for learning long-term strategies of research (primarily in genetics, evolution, biochemistry, and bioinformatics) and complex databases of original research data (most famously BIRDD: Beagle Investigations Return with Darwinian Data – on the Galapagos Finches) that are more easily probed by students with multivariate statistics and multidimensional visualization.

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Research Group

Rama Viswanathan, Beloit College (graph theory, computer science)

Noppadon Khiripet, NECTEC (Bangkok, Thailand) (graph theory, computer science) 

Roger Wagner, University of Delaware (histologist, microscopist)

Anton Weinstein, Truman State University (population genetics, bioinformatics)

Vince Streif, University of Wisconsin Madison (graph theory, computer science)

Sijia Liang and Yang Yang, University of Minnesota (statistics)

Peter Lockhart, Massey University (New Zealand) (molecular evolution)

Peter Biro, Centre for Ecological Research, Balaton Limnological Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences (community ecology)

Kristin Jenkins, University of Wisconsin Madison; Stacey Kiser, Lane Community College (Oregon); Ethel Stanley, Three Rivers Community College (Missouri); and Sam Donovan (University of Pittsbugh) (BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium)

Colleges

College of Arts & Sciences

RESOURCES

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