David Schaffer

Bioengineering

Binghamton University

Introduction to Evolutionary Computation

Monday, October 21, 2013
Academic Building A G008, 5:00 PM

Abstract

This talk is intended as a brief tutorial to this active and complex domain. It will strive to give the audience an intuition for how simulating evolutionary processes in a computer has been harnessed to solve some engineering challenges. In addition, I will suggest how these models may also be used to gain insights into natural evolution the way other models are used to sharpen our understanding of complex dynamical systems. I will show animations and provide a couple of industrial applications. One reason for this talk is that two other speakers later in the year will present work that employs evolutionary computation. Having some background and intuition should make these talks easier to grasp.

Biography

Dr. Schaffer recently retired as a Research Fellow after 25 years with Philips Research. He now advises graduate students and initiates research projects largely of his own choosing at Binghamton University in the domains of bioinformatics, evolving intelligent machines, and the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s
disease. He believes that evolutionary computation is one of the most valuable technologies for mastering complexity. Dr Schaffer holds a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Notre Dame, M.S. in Systems Engineering from Widener University, and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Vanderbilt. He has published some five dozen peer-reviewed papers, serves on the editorial board for the Evolutionary Computation Journal, and the steering committee for the Evolutionary Multi-objective Optimization conference series. He holds thirty-eight issued US patents. In 2012, he was named a Pioneer in Evolutionary Computation by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society.