Cristopher David Moore, known as Cris Moore, (born March 12, 1968 in New Brunswick, New Jersey)Curriculum vitae
retrieved 2012-03-10. is an American computer scientist, mathematician, and physicist. He is resident faculty at the

Santa Fe Institute The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, inclu ...

, and was formerly a full professor at the

University of New Mexico The University of New Mexico (UNM; es, Universidad de Nuevo México) is a public research university in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Founded in 1889, it is the state's flagship academic institution and the largest by enrollment, with over 25,400 ...

Biography

Moore did his undergraduate studies at

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

, graduating in 1986. He earned his Ph.D. in 1991 from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

under the supervision of

Philip Holmes Philip John Holmes (born May 24, 1945) is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. As a member of the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department, he formerly served as the interim chair ...

. After postdoctoral studies at the Santa Fe Institute, he joined the institute as a research faculty member in 1998, and moved to the University of New Mexico in 2000 as an assistant professor. He received tenure there in 2005. In 2007 he became a research professor at the Santa Fe Institute again, while retaining his University of New Mexico affiliation, and in 2008 he was promoted to full professor at UNM. His primary appointment was in the Department of Computer Science, with a joint appointment in the UNM Department of Physics and Astronomy. In 2012, Moore left the University of New Mexico and became full-time resident faculty at the

. Moore has also served on the Santa Fe, New Mexico city council from 1994 to 2002, affiliated with the Green Party of New Mexico.

Research

In 1993, Moore found a novel solution to the

three-body problem In physics and classical mechanics, the three-body problem is the problem of taking the initial positions and velocities (or momenta) of three point masses and solving for their subsequent motion according to Newton's laws of motion and Newton's ...

, showing that it is possible in Newtonian mechanics for three equal-mass bodies to follow each other around a shared orbit along a figure-eight shaped curve. Moore's results were found through numerical computations, and they were made mathematically rigorous in 2000 by Alain Chenciner and Richard Montgomery and shown computationally to be stable by Carlès Simo. Later researchers showed that similar solutions to the three-body problem are also possible under

general relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics ...

, Einstein's more accurate description of the effects of gravitation on moving bodies. After his original work on the problem, Moore collaborated with Michael Nauenberg to find many complex orbits for systems of more than three bodies, including one system in which twelve bodies trace out the four equatorial cycles of a

cuboctahedron A cuboctahedron is a polyhedron with 8 triangular faces and 6 square faces. A cuboctahedron has 12 identical vertices, with 2 triangles and 2 squares meeting at each, and 24 identical edges, each separating a triangle from a square. As such, it ...

. In 2001, Moore and John M. Robson showed that the problem of tiling one

polyomino A polyomino is a plane geometric figure formed by joining one or more equal squares edge to edge. It is a polyform whose cells are squares. It may be regarded as a finite subset of the regular square tiling. Polyominoes have been used in pop ...

with copies of another is

NP-complete In computational complexity theory, a problem is NP-complete when: # it is a problem for which the correctness of each solution can be verified quickly (namely, in polynomial time) and a brute-force search algorithm can find a solution by trying ...

. Moore has also been active in the field of

network science Network science is an academic field which studies complex networks such as telecommunication networks, computer networks, biological networks, cognitive and semantic networks, and social networks, considering distinct elements or actors rep ...

, with many notable publications in the field. In work with Aaron Clauset, David Kempe, and Dimitris Achlioptas, Moore showed that the appearance of power laws in the

degree distribution In the study of graphs and networks, the degree of a node in a network is the number of connections it has to other nodes and the degree distribution is the probability distribution of these degrees over the whole network. Definition The degre ...

of networks can be illusory: network models such as the

Erdős–Rényi model In the mathematical field of graph theory, the Erdős–Rényi model is either of two closely related models for generating random graphs or the evolution of a random network. They are named after Hungarian mathematicians Paul Erdős and Alfr� ...

, whose degree distribution does not obey a power law, may nevertheless appear to exhibit one when measured using

traceroute In computing, traceroute and tracert are computer network diagnostic commands for displaying possible routes (paths) and measuring transit delays of packets across an Internet Protocol (IP) network. The history of the route is recorded as th ...

-like tools. In work with Clauset and Mark Newman, Moore developed a probabilistic model of hierarchical clustering for complex networks, and showed that their model predicts clustering robustly in the face of changes to the link structure of the network. Other topics in Moore's research include modeling

undecidable problem In computability theory and computational complexity theory, an undecidable problem is a decision problem for which it is proved to be impossible to construct an algorithm that always leads to a correct yes-or-no answer. The halting problem is an ...

s by physical systems,

phase transition In chemistry, thermodynamics, and other related fields, a phase transition (or phase change) is the physical process of transition between one state of a medium and another. Commonly the term is used to refer to changes among the basic states o ...

s in random instances of the

Boolean satisfiability problem In logic and computer science, the Boolean satisfiability problem (sometimes called propositional satisfiability problem and abbreviated SATISFIABILITY, SAT or B-SAT) is the problem of determining if there exists an interpretation that satisfie ...

, the unlikelihood of success in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence due to the indistinguishability of advanced signaling technologies from random noise, the inability of certain types of quantum algorithm to solve

graph isomorphism In graph theory, an isomorphism of graphs ''G'' and ''H'' is a bijection between the vertex sets of ''G'' and ''H'' : f \colon V(G) \to V(H) such that any two vertices ''u'' and ''v'' of ''G'' are adjacent in ''G'' if and only if f(u) and f(v) ar ...

, and attack-resistant

quantum cryptography Quantum cryptography is the science of exploiting quantum mechanical properties to perform cryptographic tasks. The best known example of quantum cryptography is quantum key distribution which offers an information-theoretically secure solution ...

Awards and honors

In 2013, Moore became the inaugural member of the Zachary Karate Club Club. In 2014, Moore was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society for his fundamental contributions at the interface between nonlinear physics,

statistical physics Statistical physics is a branch of physics that evolved from a foundation of statistical mechanics, which uses methods of probability theory and statistics, and particularly the mathematical tools for dealing with large populations and approxim ...

and computer science, including complex network analysis, phase transitions in NP-complete problems, and the computational complexity of physical simulation. In 2015 he was elected as a

fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

. In 2017 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Selected publications

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References

External links

Home page
at the Santa Fe Institute
Citations
in Google Scholar {{DEFAULTSORT:Moore, Cris Living people 1968 births People from New Brunswick, New Jersey People from Santa Fe, New Mexico American computer scientists Theoretical computer scientists Cellular automatists New Mexico Greens Northwestern University alumni Cornell University alumni University of New Mexico faculty Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows of the American Physical Society Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Santa Fe Institute people Network scientists