Evolutionary computing borrows techniques from nature to find solutions to difficult problems by breeding them inside a computer. The techniques are now being used across a wide range of industrial and commercial applications, including scheduling, data mining, engineering design and time series prediction.
This seminar will explain in detail what evolutionary computing is and where it might be used, including demonstarting a number of techniques in action. The seminar will also give a practical guide to how to build an evolutionary algorithm to solve some problem of your own.
Ben Paechter has worked in the field for six years and is Deputy Co-ordinator of EvoNet - a European Network of Excellence in Evolutionary Computing. He has been involved in the use of evolutionary techniques to solve real world problems, including the timetabling of Napier University's 2000 weekly lectures and tutorials. Ben leads the Evolutionary Computation Research Group at Napier University.