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From: andrewt@aisb.ed.ac.uk (Andrew Tuson)
Subject: Information on GA/ALife PhD courses.
Message-ID: <CzDJK8.8I2@aisb.ed.ac.uk>
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Reply-To: andrewt@aisb.ed.ac.uk (Andrew Tuson)
Organization: Dept AI, Edinburgh University, Scotland
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 1994 19:02:31 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:25246 comp.ai.genetic:4308 comp.ai.alife:1313

My name is Andrew Tuson and I am posting to enquire about universities to
apply to for a PhD in Genetic Algorithms/ALife in English-speaking countries,
(i.e. USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Eire).

What follows is a brief summary of my relevant experience/quailfications. I
hope this may be of assistance to some of you.

I am currently studing for a MSc in Information Technology: Knowledge
Based Systems at the Department of Artificial Intellgence at the University
of Edinburgh in Scotland.

The course is 50% taught with a research project for the second half of the
degree. I intend to propose my own research project which will attempt to look
at the problem of dynamically adapting operator probabilities in genetic
algorithms.

I intend to advocate that ideas from theoretical biology, namely evolutionary
game theory, can usefully provide a theoretical framework for discussing
previous work on this problem and can be used to construct principled
techniques for adapting operator probabilites in order to enhance the
performance of genetic algorithms.

Previous to my masters degree I studied chemistry at Oxford University (St.
Hugh's College) where I obtained an upper second class honours degree. Of
particular note was the fourth year of the course which was a research project.

For this I applied the genetic algorithm to the dynamic sequencing and topology
optimisation of chemical flowshops. This work was presented to the AISB
Workshop on Evolutionary Computing in April 1994 and has been included in the
post-conference proceedings.

A list of publications, etc. and relevant ftp sites is provided below:

Cartwright, H.M. and Tuson, A.L. (1994). Genetic algorithms and flowshop
scheduling: towards the development of a real-time process control system.
In Proceedings of the AISB Workshop on Evolutionary Computing, Lecture Notes In
Computer Science 865, T.C. Fogarty (ed.), 1994, Springer Verlag. [Available via
anonymous ftp at muriel.pcl.ox.ac.uk in pub/papers/aisb1994.ps.Z].

Tuson, A.L. (1994). The Use of Genetic Algorithms to Optimise Chemical
Flowshops of Unrestricted Topology, Chemistry Part II Thesis, Oxford University
, U.K. [Available via anonymous ftp at muriel.pcl.ox.ac.uk in
pub/theses/altuson1994.ps.Z].

Tuson, A.L. (1994). The Implementation of a Genetic Algorithm for the
Scheduling and Topology Optimisation of Chemical Flowshops. Technical Report
TRGA94-01, Oxford University, U.K. [Available via anonymous ftp at
muriel.pcl.ox.ac.uk in pub/techreports/trga94-01.ps.Z].

Thanks in advance.

--
Andrew Tuson (andrewt@aisb.ed.ac.uk)

Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
