Last week I updated the list of current members of the lab. I have added a homepage link for several of the students, so please take a look!
While doing this, I've decided to write a quick summary of the current research topic of each student below, roughly divided by topic.
Evolutionary Computation
These students are researching applications of Evolutionary Algorithms, or the design / improvement of these algorithms (or a bit of both).
- Felipe is working on the application of Evolutionary Computation for Procedural Generation in Games. More specifically, he is developing a variant of Cellular GA for diversity search that allows greater control of the generator.
- Guilherme is working on Combinatorial Optimization of highly constrained problems. More specifically, he is working on the "Travelling Tournament Problem" - a variation of the Traveling Salesman Problem for tournament scheduling.
- Matheus is working on Evolutionary Computation under uncertainty. More specifically, he is developing uncertainty aware methods for model optimization in the Geoenergy domain.
- Rafael has been studying the CMA-ES algorithm. He is still deciding his research topic, but it seems headed to constraint handling or multi-objective optimization.
- Abe has been studying Multi-Objective optimization for constrained problems. More specifically, he has been researching the DARP (Dial A Ride Problem) problem of scheduling public transportation for dynamic demand scenarios.
- Nishihata has also been studying Multi-Objective optimization. His research focus more specifically on the choice of vectors for the MOEA/D algorithm.
Virtual Robots
This could have been under Evolutionary Computation, but I decided to split into its own little group. These students are working on applications of EC on the "Evogym" virtual robot environment.
- Wu is exploring Island Model based algorithms to evolve robots that are more robust to changes in scenario.
- Matteo is using the Virtual robots to explore new gene structures for evolutionary computation methods.
- Lin is researching local search + evolutionary computation (Memetic Algorithms) for robust virtual robots.
Multi Agent Simulation
These students are working on multi-agent simulations, or agent based modeling of social situations. These researches focus more on developing and understanding robust simulations than specifically optimization under evolutionary computation.
- Sara is developing multi agent simulations of ancient societies, to understand how different methods of communication evolved in these societies and how it influenced them. In particular she is studying the effect of stygmergic communication on the emergence of cooperation.
- Notsu is developing a multi agent simulation of an earthquake evacuation, to understand the effect of information (and false information) spread through social media during an evacuation.
- Tanjina is developing a multi agent simulation of the Tawaf, to understand how to offer better safety and comfort to events with large gatherings of people in limited spaces.
- Du is developing a multi agent simulation of the stock market, to understand the effect of state interventions on the economy.
Artificial Life
These students are studying more unique forms of simulations, where the focus is on understanding or reproducing aspects of life itself.
- Mizutani is developing Artificial Evolution simulations to understand the role of sexual reproduction on evolution.
- June is developing federated virtual pets that can have rich experiences with and without human interaction, to improve our understanding of virtual pets as a form of art and entertainment.
- Nishimura is studying the use of artificial life for procedural content generation.