Russell Howes began his time at IDeA Labs in May of 2006, working in the Computational Biology and Environmental Systems lab on problems relating to identifying and constructing biological networks. He graduated from BYU in April 2008 in Mathematics. While at BYU, Russell was awarded grants from the BYU Office of Research and Creative Activities and the BYU Honors Department to support his work on dynamical structure functions. He was also a high scorer on the William Lowell Putnam Mathematics Exam in 2002, 2005, and 2006. Russell won both the NDSEG (Defense) and NSF fellowships. After graduation, Russell left to pursue his PhD from UCLA.