Risto Miikkulainen
A Short Bio
Risto Miikkulainen is a Professor of Computer Science at the
University of Texas at Austin and VP of AI Research at
Cognizant Advanced AI Labs. He received an M.S. in Engineering
from the Helsinki University of Technology (now Aalto University) in
1986, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UCLA in 1990. His current
research focuses on methods and applications of neuroevolution, as
well as neural network models of natural language processing and
vision; he is an author of over 500 articles in these research areas.
Honors and Awards
- College
of Fellows, International
Neural Network Society, 2024
- AAAI Fellow, 2023
- IEEE CIS Evolutionary Computation Pioneer Award, 2020
- Gabor Award,
the International
Neural Network Society, 2017
- Outstanding Paper of the Decade Award, International Society for
Artificial Life, 2017.
- IEEE Fellow, 2016
- IEEE
Computational Intelligence Society Distinguished Lecturer, 2015-2017.
- Best Paper Awards at GECCO-2002, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2014,
2015, 2017, 2020, 2022
- Best Paper Awards at CIG-2005, 2006, 2009, 2011
- Best Paper Award at CEC-2020
- Deployed Application Award, AAAI/IAAI-2013, AAAI/IAAI-2018
- Silver Award, 2022; Bronze Medal, 2005, 2017; Human Competitive Results
Competition at GECCO
- Best
Pathway to Impact Award, NeurIPS Climate Change workshop, 2024
- BotPrize Award (Turing test for game bots), 2012
- Honorable mention, Somerfield-Ziskind Research Award,
Society of Biological Psychiatry, 2012
- Winner, Annual Competition of Pseudo-Boolean SAT Solvers at SAT-2010
and SAT-2011
Research
My research focuses on biologically-inspired computation such as
neural networks and evolutionary computation. On one hand, the goal is
to understand biological information processing, and on the other, to
develop intelligent artificial systems that learn and adapt by
observing and interacting with the environment. The three main focus
areas are: (1) Neuroevolution, i.e. evolving complex deep learning
architectures and recurrent neural networks for sequential decision
tasks such as those in robotics, games, and artificial life; (2)
Cognitive Science, i.e. models of natural language processing,
memory, and learning that, in particular, shed light on disorders such
as schizophrenia and aphasia; and (3) Computational Neuroscience,
i.e. development, structure, and function of the visual cortex,
episodic memory, and language processing.
See the UTCS Neural Networks
Research Group website as well as the Cognizant's Evolutionary AI website for research
projects, publications, demos, and software. A few highlights:
Neuroevolution: Automating Creative Discovery of AI Model
Design book (forthcoming);
AI
Paradigm Shift column and video in the AI Magazine;
Lex Fridman podcast on
Neuroevolution and Evolutionary Computation;
an interactive COVID-19 Intervention
optimization demo;
the NERO machine learning game;
the Computational
Maps in the Visual Cortex book.
Classes
Current:
Past:
Stories
Contact
- Office: GDC 3.826 (Meeting Schedule)
- Email address: risto@cs.utexas.edu
- Phone: (512) 471-9571; Fax: (512) 471-8885
-
Department of Computer Science, The University of Texas at Austin
2317 Speedway, Stop D9500, Austin, TX 78712 USA
risto@cs.utexas.edu
Wed Mar 6 21:29:39 CST 2024