Evolutionary Computation and Artificial Life (202-1-5171)

Semester A, 2003-2004

Lecturer: Prof. Moshe Sipper

Teaching Assistant: Mr. Barak Naveh

Last updated: February 5, 2004

Course Syllabus

bio-inspired computing, evolutionary algorithms, genetic algorithms, genetic programming, artificial life, cellular automata, cellular computing, self-replication, artificial neural networks.

Bibliography

• M. Sipper, Machine Nature: The Coming Age of Bio-Inspired Computing, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2002.
• A. Tettamanzi & M. Tomassini, Soft Computing: Integrating Evolutionary, Neural, and Fuzzy Systems, Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, 2001.
• Z. Michalewicz. Genetic Algorithms + Data Structures = Evolution Programs. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 3rd edition, 1996.
• M. Mitchell, An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1996.
• J. Koza, Genetic Programming: On the Programming of Computers by Means of Natural Selection, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1992.
• M. Sipper. Evolution of Parallel Cellular Machines: The Cellular Programming Approach. Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, 1997.
• Papers from the research literature.

Administrative Details

• Web: http://www.cs.bgu.ac.il/~sipper/courses/ecal041/
• Prerequisite: Design of Algorithms, Principles of Programming Languages
• Credits: 4.
• Time & Place:
  • Sunday 14:00-16:00, building 90, room 240
  • Tuesday 10:00-12:00, building 28, room 304
• Grade:
  • 70%: Final exam. (Sample questions.)
  • 30%: Exercises

Exercises
Submission as web page -- send the URL to Barak by email: barnav
Exercise	Due	Grades	Hall of Fame
1	Sunday, Nov. 16		Yair Field & Uri Lowicz
2	Wednesday, Dec. 3		Yair Field & Uri Lowicz, Eran Ziserman & Yonatan Shichel
3	Sunday, Dec. 21		Yair Field & Uri Lowicz, Eran Ziserman & Yonatan Shichel
4	Sunday, Jan. 4		Yair Field & Uri Lowicz, Yonatan Shichel
5	Sunday, Jan. 18		Yair Field & Uri Lowicz, Eran Ziserman & Yonatan Shichel, Ella Minchikowsky

Schedule
Date	Topic	Subtopic(s)
Sunday, Oct. 26, 14-16	Class cancelled	(due to students' strike)
Tuesday, Oct. 28, 10-12	Introduction	to Bio-Inspired Computing and Artificial Life
Sunday, Nov. 2, 14-16	Genetic Algorithms	Introduction
Tuesday, Nov. 4, 10-12	Genetic Algorithms	Schema Theorem
Sunday, Nov. 9, 14-16	Genetic Algorithms	Advanced Operators
Tuesday, Nov. 11, 10-12	Genetic Algorithms	Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP)
Sunday, Nov. 16, 14-16	Genetic Algorithms	Evolution of Fuzzy Systems
Tuesday, Nov. 18, 10-12	Genetic Algorithms	Coevolution of Fuzzy Systems, Coevolving Sorting Networks
Sunday, Nov. 23, 14-16	Genetic Programming	Introduction (also here, here, and here)
Tuesday, Nov. 25, 10-12	Molecular Biology	(Dr. Chen Keasar)
Sunday, Nov. 30, 14-16	Genetic Programming	Examples (here and here), ADFs   (Short notes on GP, ADFs and branch typing)
Tuesday, Dec. 2, 10-12	Genetic Programming	ADFs, Varieties of GP
Sunday, Dec. 7, 14-16	Artificial Neural Networks	Introduction + Supervised Learning -- Perceptrons (Introductory paper on neural networks)
Tuesday, Dec. 9, 10-12	Artificial Neural Networks	Supervised Learning -- Backpropagation
Sunday, Dec. 14, 14-16	Evolution	(Dr. Ariel Novoplansky)
Tuesday, Dec. 16, 10-12	Genetic Algorithms	Coevolving Solutions to the SCS Problem (Mr. Assaf Zaritsky)
Sunday, Dec. 21, 14-16	Hanukkah Vacation
Tuesday, Dec. 23, 10-12	Artificial Neural Networks	Unsupervised Learning -- Self-Organizing Feature Maps (also here and here)
Sunday, Dec. 28, 14-16	Artificial Neural Networks	Evolving Artificial Neural Networks
	Cellular Computing	Cellular Automata
Tuesday, Dec. 30, 10-12	Cellular Computing	Introduction (also here)
Sunday, Jan. 4, 14-16	Cellular Computing	Cellular Programming (also here)
Tuesday, Jan. 6, 10-12	Cellular Computing	Cellular Programming -- Coevolving Architectures for Cellular Machines
Sunday, Jan. 11, 14-16	Artificial Self-Replication	(also this paper)
Tuesday, Jan. 13, 10-12	Artificial Life	Introduction
Sunday, Jan. 18, 14-16	Artificial Life	GARD & Origin of Life, also here (Mr. Barak Naveh)
Tuesday, Jan. 20, 10-12	Artificial Life	Digital Universes -- Tierra, Avida (Mr. Barak Naveh)