Natural Blogarithms

Things have finally come together for the summer. I was beginning to wonder if anyone would hire me at all. I had submitted applications to several research labs and other facilities hoping to work on some research over the summer. All of them fell through, so I began volunteering at the extension campuses for Wayland. The more “exotic” locations were not in need of any math professors. I finally offered my service to the nearest locations outside of Plainview, namely Lubbock and Amarillo. They both wrote back indicating they had need. It just so happened that the two classes needed (one in Lubbock and one in Amarillo) are not ones I have taught before: Math for Seconday School Teachers and Computational Math (a remedial math course).

After soliciting myself to these campuses I heard from Texas Tech, through my old doctoral advisor, that there was a need for a post-doc mathematician on a bioinformatics research program. I was offered the post and now I am looking forward to venturing in the wide world of bioinformatics. Yeehaw! Now, it looks as though, in addition to teaching, I will have my name on a least a couple of published papers by the end of the year. Things turned around rather quickly. I am quite excited about all of the opportunities for the summer. It’s just too bad that none of my work is in my hometown of Plainview. But Lori has offered to take me to Amarillo on Monday nights and there is a good chance that a significant portion of the research can be done from my office here in Plainview. But that will just have to be something that we’ll see about.

By the way, if you are interested in learning a little more about this new area of research, here are a couple of links about the person I will be working for.

1. Thea Wilkins : She holds the Bayer CropScience Regent’s Endowed Professorship in Genomics.
2. Building a Better Cotton Boll:
   

   With nearly six million acres devoted to the crop, Texas already boasts the world’s largest cotton-producing area. State leaders and Texas Tech University officials are betting it will soon be the most genetically advanced.

   Enticed by the promise of millions in combined state and university research dollars and a new prestigious endowment, Dr. Thea Wilkins has quit the West Coast and planted new roots as Texas Tech’s head cotton geneticist.

   

3. Gov. Perry Announces Grant to Texas Tech for Agriculture Genomics Research

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