Evolutionary Computation Research

• What is Evolutionary Computation?
  • Check out a formal definition/description
  • Here's a definition in my own words:  Look at an interesting problem in nature; form virtual animals with arrays of genetic information; allow the organisms to mate; create children by combining parents' genes; apply mutation and fitness functions; purge some animals; repeat for thousands and thousands of generations and observe the final population in terms of the problem at hand.
• Two of our publications
  • Townsend, G. C., Hazel, W. and Smock, R.  Using Evolutionary Computation Methods to Support Analytical Models for the Evolution and Maintenance of Conditional Strategies in Chthamalus anisopoma.  Proceedings of the 2005 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO), (July2005), 409-415. 
  • Briney, K. and Karpinski T.  An Interdisciplinary Investigation of the Evolution and Maintenance of Conditional Strategies in Chthamalus anisopoma, Using Genetic Programming and a Quantitative Genetic Model.  Proceedings of the 2003 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) Workshops Program, 2003, Chicago. (Student authors/presenters, Kristin Briney and Tod Karpinski, pictured below.)          

NSF C-RUI Grant (DEB-0223089, $841,000, funded September 6, 2002, 4 years), "Theoretical and Empirical Studies of a Conditional Strategy: Environmentally Cued Pupal Color in Swallowtail Butterflies." Project director and Principal Investigator: Wade Hazel, Co-Principal Investigators: Chet Fornari Bryan Hanson, Kevin Kinney, Rick Smock, Robert Stark, Gloria Townsend

• Our Summer 2005 and 2006 DePauw University Student Teams

Ben Steffen (Class of 2005; currently in graduate school at UC Berkeley)	Ryan Smith (Class of 2006) presenting research results at November 1, 2006, poster session

• Andrew Hadley (Class of 2009) at far right.  Also: three Park Tudor High School (Indianapolis, IN) students who helped us summer 2006:  Josh Kimpel (far left), Amy Maxwell (second from left) and Yunha Moh (second from right).