Kenneth De Jong
Krasnow Institute
George Mason University

Abstract:

Historically, the field of Computer Science has developed from the fields of mathematics and engineering. While the influence of these fields continues to be quite strong, there is an increasing interest in developing new computational techniques based on inspiration from nature.  Examples include artificial neural networks, evolutionary algorithms, and ant colony optimization.  In this lecture I describe some of the more popular nature-inspired techniques, illustrate their behavior through examples, and discuss some important problem areas to which they are being applied.