I am a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder BioFrontiers Institute. Previously, I was a doctoral student at the University of Colorado Boulder, co-advised by Prof. Aaron Clauset in Computer Science and Prof. Laura Dee in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

In my research, I develop and use methods from network science and machine learning to understand and predict the organization and dynamics of biological systems. My current research includes (i) predicting patient outcomes in ovarian cancer based on characteristics of the tumor microenvironment, (ii) predicting interactions between species in ecosystems and forecasting how they might change over time under disturbances, with implications for ecosystem conservation and management decision-making, and (iii) developing methods for predicting missing links in networks. I am particularly interested in collaborative interdisciplinary projects and in using novel methods from computer science to generate new insights from biological data. I’ve also previously worked in the technology industry and done research in human-computer interaction related to smart cities, museum technology, and personal health informatics systems.

Recent Happenings

May 2024 - I defended my PhD dissertation entitled “Interpretable Prediction and Decision-Making Under Uncertainty Using Biological Networks.”

Septemer 2023 - Presented with Dr. Benjamin Bitler (Department of OB/GYN, The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus) at the Ovarian Cancer Think Tank Meeting about ongoing work with him, Dr. Aaron Clauset, and other CU Anschutz collaborators - “Spatial structure of the tumor microenvironment in high grade serous ovarian carcinoma.”

August 2023 - Presented at the Ecological Society of America conference in Portland, Oregon - “Predicting missing interactions in food webs using stacked models and species traits” (ongoing work with Dr. Aaron Clauset, Dr. Laura Dee, Dr. Françosi Massol and Dr. Kate Wottoon) and won the Volterra Award for the best student talk on ecological theory.

April 2023 - Our Synthesis article “Decision-making under uncertainty for species introductions into ecological networks” was published in Ecology Letters! This involved a collaborative effort with members of the Dee Lab to synthesize literature related to species introductions into ecosystems and I show that using dynamic network models one can visualize trade-offs and make decisions under uncertainty about species introductions including in high-stakes ecosystem management scenarios such as assisted migration.

Journal Articles

Lucy Van Kleunen, Mansooreh Ahmadian, Miriam D. Post, Rebecca J. Wolsky, Christian Rickert, Kimberly R. Jordan, Junxiao Hu, Jennifer K. Richer, Lindsay W. Brubaker, Nicole Marjon, Kian Behbakht, Matthew J. Sikora, Benjamin G. Bitler, Aaron Clauset. 2024. The spatial structure of the tumor immune microenvironment can explain and predict patient response in high-grade serous carcinoma. Cancer Immunology Research. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1158/2326-6066.CIR-23-1109 Code: github.com/lucyvk/ovarian_cancer_spatial

Lucy Van Kleunen, Katie A. Peterson, Meghan T. Hayden, Aislyn Keyes, Aaron J. Schwartz, and Henry Li. 2023. Decision-making under uncertainty for species introductions into ecological networks. Ecology Letters, 26, 983–1004. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.14212 Code: github.com/lucyvk/species_introduction_risk

Lucy Van Kleunen, Brian Muller, and Stephen Voida. 2021. “Wiring a City”: A Sociotechnical Perspective on Deploying Urban Sensor Networks. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 5, CSCW1, Article 178, 22 pages. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1145/3449252

Conference Papers

Justin Petelka, Lucy Van Kleunen, Liam Albright, Elizabeth Murnane, Stephen Voida, and Jaime Snyder. 2020. Being (In)Visible: Privacy, Transparency, and Disclosure in the Self-Management of Bipolar Disorder. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–14. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376573

Sean Wallace, Lucy Van Kleunen, Marianne Aubin-Le Quere, Abraham Peterkin, Yirui Huang, and Jeff Huang. 2017. Drafty: Enlisting Users to Be Editors Who Maintain Structured Data. In proceedings of the Fifth AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing - HCOMP 2017, Quebec City, Canada, October 2017

Lucy Van Kleunen, Trent Green, Miranda Chao, Tiffany Citra, Carlene Niguidula. 2017. Design Considerations for a Large Display Touch Application in Informal Education. In: Hammond T., Adler A., Prasad M. (eds) Frontiers in Pen and Touch. Human-Computer Interaction Series. Springer, Cham

Posters

Lucy Van Kleunen, Joel Holton, Daniel Strawn, and Stephen Voida. 2019. Poster: Designing Navigation Aides for Wildland Firefighters</a>. In Adjunct Proceedings of the 2019 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and the 2019 International Symposium on Wearable Computers (UbiComp/ISWC ’19 Adjunct), September 9–13, 2019, London, United Kingdom. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4 pages.

Workshop Papers

Lucy Van Kleunen and Stephen Voida. 2019. Challenges in Supporting Social Practices Around Personal Data for Long-Term Mental Health Management. 4th International Workshop on Mental Health and Well-being: Sensing and Intervention. UbiComp 2019.

Lucy Van Kleunen and Stephen Voida. From personal to collective informatics. CSCW 2018 Workshop on Social Issues in Personal Informatics.

Speculative Designs

Lucy Van Kleunen and Stephen Voida. Controlling Disclosure of Personal Health Data - Features that improve how patients with chronic disease manage access to personal health data from self-tracking applications. Shorenstein Center Privacy Forecast 2019.