Later this month, I’m going to present my first academic paper at the Genetic and Evolutionary Computing Conference (GECCO) in Melbourne, Australia. I’ll share the full paper once it’s officially published. For now, I wrote a blog post about the journey from experiment to paper, what this work means to me, and where I hope to go from here. If you’re curious about what the heck I’m actually doing with this Evolutionary Computation stuff, check it out!

https://thinkingwithnate.wordpress.com/2024/07/03/why-the-game-of-life-paper/

.@bphmetz explores a #PLOSBiology study which uses in silico rewiring of #GeneticCodes & functional protein data to reveal a positive correlation between #robustness & protein #evolvability. Primer: https://plos.io/3K8lIP0 Paper: https://plos.io/4dXt85p

The standard #GeneticCode is robust, but is robustness good/bad for #evolution? @joshualevipayne &co use experimental data to show that robust genetic codes enhance protein #evolvability by producing smooth adaptive landscapes with few peaks #PLOSBiology https://plos.io/4dXt85p

Time for a new #introduction

I'm a #ComputerScience #PhD candidate at the #University of #Vermont (#UVM). There, I'm doing #AI and #ALife #research with Josh Bongard and many others. Themes include #evolution, #evolvability, innate #intelligence, #cells, #bodies, and #endosymbiosis.

I believe #science should be open and accessible, so I write about my ideas on a #Wordpress #blog, review relevant #books on #Goodreads, and publish my source code on #Github (links in my profile).

I'm passionate about #diversity, #socialjustice, #sustainability, #ethics, #philosophy, and all things #tech. In my personal life, I love #food, #cooking, #reading, #yoga, #hiking, #art, and #StarTrek.

I worked for many years on #Google #Search as a #software #engineer, #techlead, and #manager. I used to be proud of that, but lately I have concerns.

My favorite #programming language is #Python, but I know many more, and lately have been quite enjoying #CUDA #GPU programming in #cplusplus.