Convergence of evolutionary biology and software engineering: Putting practice in action

This paper presents a project in experiential learning where students put knowledge of software engineering processes into action in a multidisciplinary project combining computer science and biology. Visualization serves as a primary element to bind the concepts of the two disciplines. Students seeking to further their experience and strengthen their skills in software engineering may choose to complete their senior capstone course working on an ongoing project to construct a toolkit for visualization of phylogenies generated from Avida experimental data. Avida provides a complex computational environment in which the evolution of digital organisms is tracked and analyzed to help find answers to a wide range of research questions. Student projects involve extensions of existing analytic and visualization techniques, as well as the addition of new, often novel, techniques. Importantly, to be successful a visualization technique must be appropriate for the domain in which it is to be used, requiring students to also understand elements of biology. It is our premise that exposing computer science students to the convergence of these two disciplines will strengthen their ability to work at different levels of abstraction and develop new conceptual frameworks to address current and future challenges in hardware and software.