The EvoStar conference concluded with a very appropriate visit to the museum dedicated to Gregor Mendel, famous hereditary biologist and abbot of St. Thomas' Abbey in Brno.
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| amazing plasterwork in the chapel ceiling |
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| the library |
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| Not just biology, but astronomy, too. Wow! |
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| Mendel's desk, instruments, and writings |
I have been enjoying the various EvoStar sessions, but I don't have a publication this year. The reason I am here is for the Julian Francis Miller Award.
Julian was a renowned evolutionary computation scientist, the inventor of Cartesian Genetic Programming, evolution in materio, many clever acronyms, and a regular presence at EvoStar. He was also a colleague and friend. Sadly, he died last year. My co-editor and I wrote an obituary for the Artificial Life journal, and many of his colleagues contributed moving anecdotes and tributes to the SIGEVO newsletter.
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| Julian Miller, 1955-2022 |
SPECIES (the Society for the Promotion of Evolutionary Computation in Europe and its Surroundings) inaugurated an annual award in honour of Julian. This year, it was my honour to receive it. I have travelled to Brno to be presented with the award, and to give a talk.
The talk I gave this morning was titled Beyond Reservoir Computing: metamaterials and meta-dynamics, about ideas that I am currently working on that have grown out of work Julian and I did together. I like to think that Julian would have found these ideas interesting.
I arrived home from Eastercon mid afternoon yesterday. Today, I left home at 9:30am to drive to Stansted and catch a plane to Brno, for the EvoStar conference (which starts tomorrow). After a smooth journey, I arrived at the conference hotel late afternoon.
