WORLDCOMP'07: Keynote Presentation

Innovation in Complex Adaptive Systems Professor John H. Holland Founder/Father of Genetic Algorithms University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA Date: Monday - June 25, 2007 Time: 9:50 - 10:50 AM Location: Lance Burton Theater

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Complex adaptive systems (cas) consist of many agents that interact in conditional (nonlinear) ways and adapt (learn) as they interact – ecosystems, markets, and biological cells are familiar examples. Because of the conditional interactions and adaptation, perpetual novelty and innovation are characteristic features of cas. Perpetual novelty is not as rare or intricate as it might seem: a half-dozen rules are sufficient to provide the perpetual novelty of chess. Understanding innovation requires extraction of building blocks for the cas of interest, similar to finding the rules of chess. Genetic algorithms (GA’s) offer a concrete example of innovation via the simultaneous discovery and recombination of building blocks. This presentation discusses some of the basic relations between cas, innovation, and GA’s.

Biography

John H. Holland, known worldwide as the father of genetic algorithms is one of today's most innovative and visionary thinkers in the emerging science of complexity.

Holland is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. He received his B.S. in Physics from MIT in 1950, and his M.A. in Math and Ph.D. in Communication Science from Michigan in 1954 and 1959 respectively.

Currently Holland is Co-Chairman of the Science Board of the Santa Fe Institute and a member of the Executive Committee, Board of Trustees and External Professor for the Institute. He is Director of the University of Michigan/Santa Fe Institute Research Program. Holland is a member of the Executive Committee, Program for Complex Systems, and an Associate of the Institute for Humanities both at the University of Michigan.

Holland has also received numerous awards and honors including the Levy Medal of the Franklin Institute, the Henry Russel Lectureship from the University of Michigan (the highest honor the University can confer upon a member of the faculty), the World Economic Counsel Fellowship and the MacArthur Fellowship.

Holland's most recent book, Emergence: from Chaos to Order, was published in 1998. He also wrote Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity (1995), Induction: Processes of Inference, Learning and Discovery (with K.J. Holyoak, R.E. Nisbett and P.R. Thagard) (1986), Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems (1975). Holland also holds a patent with A.W. Burks (no. 4,697,242) Adaptive Computing System Capable of Learning and Discovery.

Holland also is a member of many editorial boards: Machine Learning, Complex Systems, Adaptive Behavior, Evolutionary Computation, and Complexity.

The Faculty of The Moore School of the School of Engineering and Applied Science have chosen John H. Holland as the winner of the Pender Award for founding genetic algorithms, and for innovative research in the science of complexity and adaptation.