Joshua Stevenson

Joshua Stevenson

PhD Student in Mathematical Biology

Contact Me

About me

I am a current PhD candidate in mathematics at the University of Tasmania. My research interests are primarily the application of algebraic ideas to problems in evolutionary biology.

I write a lot of Python for my PhD project and have a number of packages on my GitHub. I also write code in my free time, and am currently working on learning HTML/CSS and Javascript as well as Swift for iOS development.

Projects

Circular Genome Tools (cgt)
Sage/Python package for genome rearrangement models.

I've been working on this package on my own over the course of my PhD. I've learned a lot about managing python projects, including writing unit tests and documentation.

  • Python
  • SageMath
  • GAP
  • GitHub Actions
  • PyPI
  • PyTest
  • Sphinx
SplitP
Python package for split-based approaches to phylogenetic tree reconstruction.

This is a project I started when working on my honours project. It can be used to take DNA sequence alignments and output information which can be used to build evolutonary trees. The most important lesson from this project was how to choose appropriate data structures to write performant code, in a situation where time and space complexity can be a real problem.

  • Python
  • SciPy
  • GitHub Actions
  • PyPI
  • PyTest
  • Sphinx
TextCrate
A helpful little notes app for the macOS menu bar.

I made this app because I was constantly opening a new plaintext document to paste in code output, clear formatting from text or draft an abstract for a conference talk. The menu bar UX is difficult to get right but after mutliple stackoverflow discussions I think it turned out OK!

  • Swift
  • UIKit
  • XCode Storyboards
  • MVVC Pattern
Phylomania 2020 Conference Website
Undeterred and on the web!

I developed the website for the 2020 Phylomania conference. It needed to be a static site with a simple style with nods to the pages from pervious years. The website template was also used for the 2021 conference.

  • HTML
  • CSS
  • Semantic CSS

Downloads

Honours Thesis

The thesis I wrote for my honours degree in 2019.

Download
LaTeX commands

Some basic custom commands I use in LaTeX projects.

Download