chase

I am a mathematical biologist and computer scientist studying cultural evolution with Prof. Marc Feldman at Stanford.

Evolution is a physical process that has created the diversity of the natural world, forming entities that become progressively more efficient at using information over time. I believe understanding this process can help us 1) design social policies that account for population resource and information dynamics and 2) develop objective-free learning algorithms to create new forms of computational intelligence.

Current Affiliations:
  • Department of Biology, Stanford
  • Kempner Institute, Harvard
team projects
lookout pathogen surveillance software
Lookout
Fathom Information Design
Lightweight pathogen surveillance software designed for public health officials across the world.
rowboat spreadsheet visualization software
Rowboat
Fathom Information Design
A lightning fast tool for understanding large datasets.
artifacts
radial evolutionary tree
Radial Family Tree
Visualizes the family history of a simulated population with 32 founders.
horizontal family tree
Horizontal Family Tree
A horizontal representation of an evolutionary simulation through time.
horizontal family tree
Weighted Voronoi Stippling
Voronoi cells. With stippling. A classic.
publications
The Emergence of Complex Behavior in Large-Scale Ecological Environments
Joseph Bejjani, Chase Van Amburg, Chengrui Wang, Chloe Huangyuan Su, Sarah M. Pratt, Yasin Mazloumi, Naeem Khoshnevis, Sham M. Kakade, Kianté Brantley, Aaron Walsman.
arXiv, Submitted.
DIRT: The Distributed Intelligent Replicator Toolkit
Chengrui Wang, Chase Van Amburg, Chloe Huangyuan Su, Joseph Bejjani, Sarah M. Pratt, Yasin Mazloumi, Naeem Khoshnevis, Sham M. Kakade, Kianté Brantley, Aaron Walsman.
arXiv, Poster at ALife 2025.
Pandemic-Potential Viruses are a Blind Spot for Frontier Open-Source LLMs
Laura Luebbert, Yasha Ektefaie, Arya S. Rao, Colby Wilkason, Dolo Nosamiefan, Olivia Achonduh-Atijegbe, Harouna Soumare, Adefoye Precious Adebayo, Olufemi Olulaja, Judith Amadi, Nicholas Oyejide, Funmilayo Olayiwola, Etim Henshaw, Yusuf Okocha, Nkechinyere Nwachukwu, Elechi Friday Ewah, Sylvanus Okoro, Ebenezer Nwakpakpa, Peter Okokhere, Kelly Iraoyah, Joseph Okoeguale, Ireti Dada, Andy Burris, Karlie Zhao, Ellory Laning, Chase Van Amburg, Paul Cronan, Ben Fry, Christian Happi, Al Ozonoff, Pardis C. Sabeti.
NeurIPS 2025 Workshop on GenAI for Health.
Automated Detection of an Insect-Induced Keystone Vegetation Phenotype Using Airborne LiDAR
Zhengyang Wang, Robert Huben, Peter B. Boucher, Chase Van Amburg, Jimmy Zeng, Nina Chung, Jocelyn Wang, Jeffrey King, Richard J. Knecht, Ivy Ng'iru, Augustine Baraza, Christopher C. M. Baker, Dino J. Martins, Naomi E. Pierce, Andrew B. Davies.
Methods in Ecology and Evolution.