Anderson, James J.

The passion of my research is to develop models of ecological and biological processes from a mechanistic perspective. Currently, the work divides into three general but overlapping areas: (1) migration of organisms, (2) decision processes, and (3) mortality processes. These interests have led my students and me to explore a variety of directions such as antigen levels in salmon, passage of fish through dams and the ocean, predator foraging, decision processes in animals, neurology of swarming, and a variety of survival modeling from drosophila to dump trucks. As a research faculty of Columbia Basin Research in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, much of the work is involved with fish restoration and water use in the Columbia and Sacramento River systems. However, the diversity has evolved because of a wide ranging interest in understanding how things work and then expressing them mathematically—a habit that I also encourage in my students.