G. Matthew Fricke

Photo of Matthew Fricke I am a Research Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico, where I study computation in complex decentralised systems like supercomputing clusters, robot swarms, social insects, and immune systems. I also have an interest in the ethics of artificial systems and complexity measures as biosignatures. The robotics and computational biology research is funded by the Moses Biological Computation Lab. Through the Center for Advanced Research Computing I collaborate with scientists from a variety of disciplines to scale up their computations to supercomputers. I enjoy teaching whenever I can and mentoring students.

I earned a BA in Anthropology (Archaeology) from Appalachian State University; and a BS in Mathematics, and MS (Artificial Intelligence) and PhD degrees in Computer Science from the University of New Mexico. Through my consulting company, Go Figure Software, I've supported researchers in the UNM Physics and Los Alamos National Labs with custom scientific software.

My wife, Suzanne, and I have four boys: Henry, Leo, Owen, and Tristan. Suzanne has taught art history at the University of New Mexico, the Institute of American Indian Arts, and the Santa Fe Institute for Art and Design. She owns Gallery Hozho, a fine arts gallery for New Mexico artists in Albuquerque. She is also an author, with publications including As We See It, Indigenous Futurisms: Transcending Past, Present, Future, and Indigenous Futurisms in the Hyperpresent Now. Her dissertation is Institutionalizing Taste: Kenneth Milton Chapman, the Indian Arts Fund, and the Growth of Fine Art Pueblo Pottery .

I was born and raised in Shrewsbury, UK, but have lived in Mount Airy, North Carolina and Albuquerque, New Mexico for most of my life. I have been interested in computers since playing with a BBC Computer when I was nine years old. I came to New Mexico for Harvard Ayers' southwest field school and stayed to work for the Park Service at Petroglyph National Monument.

Office Schedule

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Teaching

Conferences

Online Chair (2024–25) for the IEEE Symposium on High-Performance Interconnects (HOTI), an annual conference established in 1993 that brings together researchers and practitioners in high-performance computing and networking.

Publications

Journals

Assembly theory and its relationship with computational complexity. Chris Kempes et al. Nature Complexity 2 (1), 27 (2025). Web (PDF hosted here embargoed until May 2026)

Space-Time Causal Discovery in Earth System Science: A Local Stencil Learning Approach. J. Jake Nichol, Michael Weylandt, G. Matthew Fricke, Melanie E. Moses, Diana Bull, Laura P. Swiler. JGR Machine Learning and Computation (2025), Pre-publication PDF, Web

More is Faster: Why Population Size Matters in Biological Search. Janatul Ferdous, G. Matthew Fricke, and Melanie Moses. Journal of Computational Biology (2024), PDF, Web

CO2 emissions during the 2023 Litli Hrtur eruption in Reykjanes, Iceland: 13C tracks magma degassing. Tobias Fischer et al. Bulletin of Volcanology (2024), Web, PDF

Drone CO2 measurements during the Tajogaite volcanic eruption. John Ericksen et al. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques (2024), Web, PDF

Sensor Equipped UAS for Non-Contact Bridge Inspections: Field Application. Roya Nasimi, Fernando Moreu, and G. Matthew Fricke. Sensors (2023), PDF

Aerial Survey Robotics in Extreme Environments: Mapping Volcanic CO2 Emissions With Flocking UAVs. John Ericksen et al. Frontiers in Control Engineering (2022). Web, PDF

The Grayness of the Origin of Life. Hillary H. Smith et al. Life 11, 498 (2021). Web, PDF

Machine learning feature analysis illuminates disparity between E3SM climate models and observed climate change. Nichol, J. Jake; Matthew G. Peterson; Kara J. Peterson; G. Matthew Fricke; Melanie E. Moses. Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics (2021). Web, PDF

Aerial strategies advance volcanic gas measurements at inaccessible, strongly degassing volcanoes. Emily J. Liu et al. Science Advances 6(44), eabb9103 (2020). PDF

Swarm Foraging Review: Closing the Gap Between Proof and Practice. Qi Lu, G. Matthew Fricke, John C. Ericksen, and Melanie E. Moses. Current Robotics Reports (2020). PDF

Variability in the Analysis of a Single Neuroimaging Dataset by Many Teams. Rotem Botvinik-Nezer et al. Nature (2020). Paper

Modeling T Cell Motion in Tissues During Immune Responses. Cannon, Judy; Melanie E. Moses; Janie R. Byrum; Paulus Mrass; G. Matthew Fricke; Humayra Tasnim. Biophysical Journal 116 (2019): 322a. doi: 10.1016/j.bpj.2018.11.1749.

Quantitative Measurement of Naïve T cell Association with Dendritic Cells, FRCs, and Blood Vessels in Lymph Nodes. Tasnim, Humayra et al. Frontiers in Immunology 9 (2018). PDF

ROCK regulates the intermittent mode of interstitial T cell migration in inflamed lungs. Paulus Mrass et al. Nature Communications (2017)

Persistence and Adaptation in Immunity: T Cells Balance the Extent and Thoroughness of Search. Fricke, G. Matthew et al. PLoS Computational Biology 12(3): e1004818 (2016). PDF

Immune-inspired search strategies for robot swarms. G. Matthew Fricke, Joshua Hecker, Judy Cannon, and Melanie Moses. Robotica 34(8) (2016): 1791–1810. PDF

Quantifying the Effect of Colony Size and Food Distribution on Harvester Ant Foraging. T. P. Flanagan et al. PLoS ONE (2012). PDF

GetBonNie for building, analyzing, and sharing rule-based models. Bin Hu; G. Matthew Fricke; James R. Faeder; Richard G. Posner; William S. Hlavacek. Bioinformatics (2009)

Receptor aggregation by intermembrane interactions: A Monte Carlo study. G. Matthew Fricke; James L. Thomas. Biophysical Chemistry 119(2) (2006): 205–211. PDF

Conference Proceedings

Navigating the Edge: UAS Boundary Tracing for Efficient Volcanic Plume Monitoring. John Ericksen et al. IEEE International Symposium on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics (SSRR) (2024). PDF

A Bio-Inspired Transportation Network for Scalable Swarm Foraging, Qi Lu, G. Matthew Fricke, Takaya Tsuno, and Melanie E. Moses. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (2020).

LoCUS: A loss-tolerant volcano survey algorithm, Ericksen John et al. IEEE Robotics and Computing Conference (IRC) (2020)

Ignorance is Not Bliss: An Analysis of Central-Place Foraging Algorithms. Abhinav Aggarwal et al. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (2019). Paper PDF, Presentation PDF

Comparing physical and simulated performance of a deterministic and a bio-inspired stochastic foraging strategy for robot swarms Lu, Qi et al. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Robotics and Automation (2019)

Brief Announcement: On Site Fidelity and the Price of Ignorance in Swarm Robotic Central Place Foraging Algorithms. Aggarwal et al. PODC (2019). https://doi.org/10.1145/3293611.3331572 PDF

A Distributed Deterministic Spiral Search Algorithm for Swarms. Fricke et al. IROS (2016). PDF

Distinguishing Adaptive Search From Random Search in Robots and T cells. Fricke et al. GECCO (2015)

From Microbiology to Microcontrollers: Robot search patterns inspired by T cell movement. Fricke et al. ECAL (2013). Paper

How Ants Turn Information into Food. Flanagan et al. IEEE SSCI – ALIFE (2011). PDF

Emergent Representation in a Robot Control Architecture. Claiborne et al. UNM-NASA PURSUE Conference (2000)

White Papers

Comment on Docket No. FR-6111-P-02: HUD's Implementation of the Fair Housing Act's Disparate Impact Standard. S. Gipson Rankin et al. PDF

Community Report from the Biosignatures Standards of Evidence Workshop. V. Meadows et al. PDF

Book Chapters

"Using RuleBuilder to graphically define and visualize BioNetGen-language patterns and reaction rules." Suderman, Ryan; G. Matthew Fricke; William S. Hlavacek. In Modeling Biomolecular Site Dynamics, Methods in Molecular Biology vol. 1945. PDF

"Ant Colonies as a Model of Human Computation." Moses, Flanagan, Letendre, and Fricke. In Handbook of Human Computation, Springer (2014). Website

UNM News Articles

Selected news articles covering Matthew Fricke's research, mentorship, and collaborative projects.

VolCAN: Volcanic Drone Research

UNM's VolCAN Team Makes History in Canary Islands
Deployment of autonomous drones to sample volcanic gases during an eruption.

Engineering in Action Features Project VolCAN
Technical development and field deployment.

NASA Robotics Challenges

UNM Team Qualifies for Second Phase of NASA Robotics Challenge

CHILI HOUSE: Autonomous Space Agriculture

Could Plants Control Robots on Mars?

Partnering for Success: NASA and Supercomputing Competitions

SIMReef: Reef Modelling and Environmental Computing

UNM Researchers Take a Deep Dive into Our Changing Planet with SIMReef Project

HPC Student Mentorship

UNM Competes in HPC Student Cluster Competitions

CARC Team Travels to Denver for Supercomputing Conference

Student Theses and Dissertations

PhD Dissertation: Jannatul Ferdous, Exploring Immune System through Computational Modeling: A Comprehensive Study of Lymph Nodes and Immune Response Scaling, Vaccine Efficacy, and Large-Scale Extreme First Passage Time , UNM, 2025. PDF

PhD Dissertation: John Ericksen, Aerial Robotic Studies of Volcanic CO₂ Emissions, UNM, 2025. PDF

PhD Dissertation: Jake Nichol, Seeking Structure in Complex Systems: From Feature Analysis to Space-Time Causal Discovery with Earth Science Applications, UNM, 2025. PDF

PhD Dissertation: Humayra Tasnim, Insight Into Complexity: Novel Information Theoretic Analysis of Spatiotemporal Interactions, UNM, 2024. PDF

MS Thesis: Antonio Griego, Supervised Neural Network Learning for Improved Passivity in Robot Interaction Control Applications, UNM, 2025. PDF

MS Thesis: Quincy Wofford, Reproducible Application Platforms for Distributed Computing Systems, UNM, 2023. PDF

MS Thesis: Michael Gurule, The Impacts of Transfer Learning for Ungulate Recognition at Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, UNM, 2023. PDF

Social Media

Facebook: https://facebook.com/gmfricke
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/MatthewFricke
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=hdPxTWwAAAAJ&hl=en
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gmfricke/

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G. Matthew Fricke

Office Schedule

Teaching

Courses

HPC Workshops

Bits and Pieces

Conferences

Publications

Journals

Conference Proceedings

White Papers

Book Chapters

UNM News Articles

VolCAN: Volcanic Drone Research

NASA Robotics Challenges

CHILI HOUSE: Autonomous Space Agriculture

SIMReef: Reef Modelling and Environmental Computing

HPC Student Mentorship

Student Theses and Dissertations

Social Media

PGP Key

Photographs

Travel Photos

Tikal, Guatemala

Monaghan, Ireland

New Mexico

Mt. St. Helens, Oregon

North Carolina

San Diego, California

Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) and Anglesey, Wales

Shrewsbury, England

Edinburgh, Scotland

Teotihuican, Mexico

Japan

Moscow, Russia

Martinique