Spring '08 Colloquia

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 Guest Speaker: Dr. David Goldberg

Dr. David Goldberg. Entrepreneurial Engineering at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
"Not Your Grandmother's Genetic Algorithm".

Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Time: 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm
Moos Tower 2-530



      Genetic algorithms (GAs)--search procedures inspired by the mechanics of natural selection and genetics--have been increasingly applied across the spectrum of human endeavor, but some researchers mistakenly think of them as slow, unreliable, and without much theoretical support. This talk briefly introduces GAs, but quickly shifts to a line of work that has succeeded in supporting GA mechanics with bounding design theory that has been used to demonstrate GA scalability, speed, and range of reliable applicability. Key elements of this theory are discussed to give insight into this accomplishment and to make the point that fast, scalable GAs may also be viewed as first-order models of human innovative or inventive processes. The talk highlights recent results in breaking the billion-variable optimization barrier for the first time. It also discusses recent experience with GA-inspired creativity or innovation support systems.

About Dr. Goldberg
     David E. Goldberg, a leader in the field of genetic algorithms, is the Jerry S. Dobrovolny Distinguished Professor in Entrepreneurial Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is also co-founder and chief scientist of Nextumi, Inc., a web2.0 startup company. Trained as a civil engineer at the University of Michigan , where he earned his B.S.E. and took his Ph.D. in 1983, Dr. Goldberg has held positions at Michigan, Alabama, and Illinois. The founding chair of the International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation, he is co-chair of the inaugural Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering held at TUDelft, and he co-founded the initiative on Engineering and Technology Studies at Illinois (ETSI).

      Among many honors, he is the recipient of a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, a Wickenden Award presented by the American Society for Engineering Education, and an Outstanding Instructor Award presented by the National Technological University . In addition to articles in professional journals, he is the author of two books on genetic algorithms, the widely-cited Genetic Algorithms in Search, Organization, and Machine Learning (1989) and The Design of Innovation (2002), and, most recently, The Entrepreneurial Engineer, which was publishedin 2006 by Wiley.

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