Evolving Car Racing Through Simulated Evolution

Nice pointer from Martin Pelikan's blog. There is an interesting video of the simulated car racing.

Per Aspera Ad Astra

Picture: cortesy of Juan Julián Merelo Guervós

I have learned from Martin Pelikan's blog that Professor Hans-Paul Schwefel will deliver a talk at GECCO 2009 named Failures as Stepping Stones to Success or "Per Aspera Ad Astra". It will be part of a major GECCO 2009 event: Learning From Failures in Evolutionary Computation workshop.

It's such an amazing initiative of organizers to hold a workshop like that, since researchers in general tend only to report their successes and, not so rarely, omit what may be qualified as "failure". How many wonderful ideas have not come from failures? Or, at least, have played the role of a pioneer starting?

Even though I will not be there (what a pity!!!), I can imagine what will be the meat and bones of Professor Schwefel's talk. Sure, I will not tell you, otherwise I would need to kill you... :)

For all those attending GECCO 2009 next summer, I would be very grateful if a good hearted soul could record a video of Professor Schwefel talk and upload it on YouTube or some video sharing service like that. :)

Evolving Proteomics Through Simulated Evolution - UPDATED

Excellent post by our blog friend Martin Pelikan, see it here.

It deals with the use of a genetic algorithm to select a subset of conformations explaining the experimental scattering profile best.

Despite choosing geophysics as my grad school career, I consider proteomics a big deal and it would worth a lot investing time and dedication pursuing a career in that field.

It would be interesting if Martin told us what kind of genetic algorithm he applied (EDA or classical ones).

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Martin Pelikan explained the evolutionary algorithm they used for evolving protein conformations:

"[...]The genetic algorithm we used is similar to a simple GA, but slightly crossed over with UMDA. We started with this simple method inspired by some prior work in this area and since the method worked, we used it. We tested it on artificially created examples and it worked great, and it gave reasonable results also for the real-world cases. More should be published soon, I hope."

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Thank you very much, Martin! I hope you achieve great results!

Estimation of Distribution Algorithms Video Tutorial

Martin Pelikan has uploaded his nice tutorial upon Estimation of Distribution Algorithms, see it here. The tutorial was given at GECCO 2008.