Dr. Wallin is the Director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Computational Science and a Professor at Middle Tennessee State University in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

My research has recently focused on three topics:

Understanding the gravitational interactions in the universe using a variety of computational and observational techniques to link numerical models with data. The goal of this project is to connect dynamical parameters associated with galaxy interactions (time since the collision, mass ratios, etc.) to star formation rates and morphology.

Using crowd-sourced data to train neural networks in complex image identification tasks. The current project is focused on identifying characters in Ancient Greek manuscripts. In a broader sense, this research focus on how well machines can learn from imperfect data.

Exploring how mixed reality systems can be used in post-secondary STEM classrooms. Currently, this involves developing a scriptable interface for MR, developing laboratory modules, and then testing it in the classroom.  

Wallin received his B.S. Degrees in Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics at Mankato State University in 1984. In 1989, Wallin obtained his Ph.D. in Astrophysics at Iowa State University. He was a National Research Council Cooperative Research Associate working in the Space Sciences Division at the Naval Research Laboratory from 1989 to 1992. From 1992 to 2010, Dr. Wallin was a faculty member in the Computational Science Program at George Mason University. During the 1999-2000 school year, he was on sabbatical leave as a visiting scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory's Applied Physics Division (X-3). In 2010, he took the job as the first director of the Computational Sciences Program at MTSU. During the spring of 2010, he will be a Visiting Fellow at Mansfield College Oxford and the University of Minnesota. Dr. Wallin was awarded a Teaching Excellence Award in 1998 from George Mason University and was nominated for the Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award by the office of the Provost in 1999 and 2006. Dr. Wallin lives with his wife Katharine and their four cats in Murfreesboro Tennessee.

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Recent publications:

• Swindall, Matthew; Croisdale, Gregory; Hunter, Chase; Keener, Ben; Williams, Alex; Brusuelas, James; Krevans, Nita; Sellew, Melissa; Fortson, Lucy & Wallin, John. (2021). Exploring Learning Approaches for Ancient Greek Character Recognition with Citizen Science Data. 128-137. 10.1109/eScience51609.2021.00023.
• Williams, Alex; Wallin, John; Yu, Haoyu & Perale, Marco; Carroll, Hyrum; Lamblin, Anne-Francoise; Fortson, Lucy; Obbink, Dirk; Lintott, Chris; Brusuelas, James. (2015). A computational pipeline for crowdsourced transcriptions of Ancient Greek papyrus fragments. Proceedings - 2014 IEEE International Conference on Big Data, IEEE Big Data 2014. 100-105. 10.1109/BigData.2014.7004460.
• Williams, Alex; Carroll, Hyrum; Wallin, John; Brusuelas, James; Fortson, Lucy; Lamblin, Anne-Francoise; Yu, Haoyu. (2014). Identification of Ancient Greek Papyrus Fragments Using Genetic Sequence Alignment Algorithms. Proceedings - 2014 IEEE 10th International Conference on eScience, eScience 2014. 2. 5-10. 10.1109/eScience51609.2021.00023.
• West, G., Ogden, M., Wallin, J. F., Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XXX, "Using two-factor similarity scoring functions to quantify and optimize the morphological similarity of models of interacting galaxies," ESA, Virtual, Granada, Spain. (November 9, 2020). To appear in the Conference Proceedings of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. https://schedule.adass2020.es/adass2020/talk/DATN7H/
• Ogden, Matthew, Graham West, John Wallin, Zachariah Sinkala, and William Smith. "Optimizing Numerical Simulations of Colliding Galaxies. II. Comparing Simulations to Astronomical Observations." Research Notes of the AAS 4, no. 8 (2020): 138.  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/abad9c/meta
• West, G., Ogden, M., Wallin, J., Sinkala, Z., & Smith, W. (2020). Optimizing Numerical Simulations of Colliding Galaxies. I. Fitness Functions and Optimization Algorithms. Research Notes of the AAS, 4(8), 136. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/abad9b/meta
• Shamir, L. and Wallin, J. 2018. VizieR Online Data Catalog: SDSS peculiar galaxy pairs list (Shamir+, 2014). VizieR Online Data Catalog. 744, (2018). https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR?-source=J/MNRAS/443/3528
•  Holincheck, Anthony J. ; Wallin, John F. ; Borne, Kirk ; Fortson, Lucy ; Lintott, Chris ; Smith, Arfon M. ; Bamford, Steven; Keel, William C. ; Parrish, Michael 2016. Galaxy Zoo: Mergers--Dynamical models of interacting galaxies. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 459, 1 (2016), 720--745.  10.1093/mnras/stw649
• Wallin, J. et al. 2016. JSPAM: A restricted three-body code for simulating interacting galaxies. Astronomy and computing. 16, (2016), 26--33. 10.1016/j.ascom.2016.03.005
• Shamir, L. et al. 2016. Leveraging pattern recognition consistency estimation for crowdsourcing data analysis. IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems. 46, 3 (2016), 474--480.
• C. Li, M. Hains, J. Wallin and Q. Wu, "Applying Data Science Methods for Early Prediction of Undergraduate Student Retention," 2019 International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence (CSCI), 2019, pp. 1337-1340, doi: 10.1109/CSCI49370.2019.00250.

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