Richard A. Watson

Dept. web page, publications, logistics etc.


Among the many interfaces between computer science and the life sciences (e.g. bioinformatics, biologically inspired computation, computational biology, biocomputation), my particular research emphasis is not merely to take inspiration from biology for new computational methods, nor merely to apply existing computational methods to biological systems, but rather to use algorithmics and complexity theory to understand the underlying algorithmic principles of biological systems (algorithmic biology).
My recent research focusses on exchange between evolutionary computation and evolutionary biology. In particular, I've been working on genetic algorithms, coevolutionary algorithms, the benefit of sexual recombination, the major evolutionary transitions, symbiosis and symbiogenesis, fitness landscapes and artificial life.

See research history (including prior publications) on old web pages:

• PhD
• PostDoc

News and Announcements

• Compositional Evolution: The Impact of Sex, Symbiosis, and Modularity on the Gradualist Framework of Evolution Book with MIT Press.
• "10 to watch in AI" by IEEE Intelligent Systems magazine.
• Paid ECS summer internships available for first class UK students in final year of their degree (ask for details).
• PhD students sought (email with details of your research interests as relevant to mine!).

Research Manifesto (June 2004): The algorithmic principles of adaptation

Publications