Julian Miller

I am a member of the Intelligent Systems Group in the Department of Electronics, University of York. The group is interested the development and application of bio-inspired techniques in computing and electronics. This includes: evolutionary algorithms, genetic programming, image processing, bio-inspired hardware, and multi-agent control.
In one of my lecture courses I teach evolutionary algorithms and their application for innovative design of electronic hardware.

Essentially I am interested in using evolutionary algorithms for creative design; naturally, with a special emphasis electronic circuits and systems. I am particularly interested in the development of evolutionary techniques that allow the generation of creative and efficient designs. I am interested in methods that allow an evolutionary design process an ability to utilize dimensions of a system that the designer hadn’t allowed for. Recently, I and my PhD student Simon Harding have demonstrated how computer controlled evolution can “invent” ways of building information processing systems in materials (e.g. liquid crystal).

I have developed a form of genetic programming (Cartesian Genetic Programming - CGP) that I would like to see it applied to more creative areas. While at the University of Birmingham I supervised a final year project on the use of CGP for evolving art (see: http://www.emoware.org/evolutionary_art.asp) Recently, CGP has been used in an evolutionary portrait painter program (see: http://dipaola.org/evolve/ )

I hope that the meetings in the cluster will help me develop insights about how to create creative evolutionary designs systems and introduce me to others working in this area.

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