What's new at the GARAGe Goodman receives Michigan Distinguished Professor of the Year, 2009 Erik Goodman was honored in May, 2009, by being named as Michigan Distinguished Professor of the Year, by the Presidents Council of the State Universities of Michigan. Each of Michigan's fifteen state universities nominates one professor for this honor, and the group selects three professors to win this award. A banquet in their honor was held on May 14. Many Visitors Arrive to Conduct Joint Research in GARAGe Many visiting researchers have joined the GARAGe in the last few years, continuing into 2010. Prof. Lihong Xu, Tongji University, and Prof. Zhenhua Li, China University of Geosciences, arrived in 2006; Visiting Scholar Qingsong Hu came from Tongji University in 2007; Visiting Scholar Bingkun Zhu came in 2008, Assoc. Prof. Wu Ping came from East China Normal University in 2008, and Prof. Meng Yao came from ECNU in 2009. Each stayed or is planning to stay between one and three years. Another visiting scholar, Dawei Li, is expected to arrive in September, 2009. Goodman and Xu Organize ACM/SIGEVO's First Asia Conference Erik Goodman and Lihong Xu, Visiting Professor in the GARAGe from Tongji University, Shanghai, recently co-organized the first Asian conference on evolutionary computation sponsored by ACM/SIGEVO (of which Goodman was the founding chair). The 2009 World Summit on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (GEC Summit-2009) was held at the HuaTing Hotel in Shanghai, June 12-14, 2009. Of 377 papers submitted, about 41% were accepted for full presentation, while about another 100 were accepted as posters. In addition to many prominent Chinese participants, about fifteen well-known Westerners presented a keynote address or tutorials, and others from outside China also joined the Chinese participants in presenting papers. Goodman Appointed to Council, Doing Research in Academy of Critical Incident Analysis In fall, 2008, Erik Goodman was appointed as a charter member of the Council of the Academy of Critical Incident Analysis (ACIA), recently founded at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. The appointment is a result of Goodman's work with a team sponsored by the Dart Foundation in developing a high-level conceptual model for analysis of critical incidents. In support of that work, Goodman and an undergraduate Professorial Assistant in the GARAGe, Matt Durak, are developing an agent-based model (ABM) simulating an emergency urban evacuation scenario, with which evolutionary computation will be used to locate optimal control parameters for traffic signals to minimize evacuation time. This model is seen as an early step in developing bottom-up tools within the framework of the ACIA top-down model, eventually aimed for use in hypothesis testing and training of first responders. Mechatronics Joint Research Initiated with Technical University of Denmark Zhun Fan, Associate Professor at Technical University of Denmark, and Erik Goodman, together with other collaborators at TUD, have obtained a grant from the Danish Research Council (1.82 million DKK) to study Automated Design of Advanced Mechatronic Systems (ADAMS). Ph.D. student Jean-Francois Dupuis spent a year at MSU with Prof. Goodman funded by this project. Bill Punch Becomes Director of MSU's High-Performance Computing Center In addition to performing research in the GARAGe and teaching activities, Prof. William Punch, co-director of the GARAGe Lab, is now the Director of MSU's High-Performance Computing Center. The center, which employs a large staff of professionals and graduate research assistants, operates two high-performance systems, a SMD system and a large cluster. Punch's staff operates and administers the systems, and provides user support and training on their usage. Over 100 users are already taking advantage of the systems, and the cluster environment is particularly appropriate for addressing large problems in evolutionary computation. Two Visiting Professors Join the GARAGe Team! In spring, 2006, two professors visiting from China joined the MSU GARAGe. Prof. Lihong Xu, Professor of Tongji University (Shanghai) and Director of the Institute of Modern Agricultural Science and Engineering, will be spending much of his time at the GARAGe over the next three years, collaborating primarily with Prof. Goodman. He is an expert on control of greenhouses, and an innovator in application of multi-objective optimization principles to such problems. Prof. Xu and Prof. Goodman, with their colleague Prof. Min Pei (GARAGe), are also working on organization of an international conference on evolutionary computation to be held in Shanghai, under sponsorship of ACM SIGEVO, China's Ministry of Education, a group of Chinese universities, and others. Zhenhua Li is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the China University of Geosciences, in Wuhan. He is interested in linear genetic programming, gene expression programming, and related methods. He is working with Prof. Goodman for one year, beginning in April, 2006. . Goodman chairs newly-formed ACM SIGEVO -- SIG on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Erik Goodman, Co-Director of the GARAGe, became the first chair of the newly chartered ACM Special Interest Group on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation, upon its founding in January, 2005. SIGEVO became a regular SIG (its bylaws were formally accepted by ACM Board) in June, 2006. SIGEVO already has over 500 members, and is the successor society to ISGEC, taking over its sponsorship of the annual GECCO conference and biennial Foundations of Genetic Algorithms Workshop. Its newsletter, SIGEVOlutions, began appearing in April, 2006. For more information, please visit the SIGEVO web pages. Goodman elected ISGEC Senior Fellow -- June '04 Erik Goodman was elected a Senior Fellow of the International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation.  Three new Fellows and three new Senior Fellows were elected by ISGEC membership and announced at the annual GECCO conference, June 30, 2004. GP/BG System Introduces Innovations for Design of Dynamic Systems -- May '04 The NSF-sponsored project "Automated Design of Mechatronic Systems Using Bond Graphs and Genetic Programming," with principal investigators Erik Goodman, Ron Rosenberg, and Kisung Seo, has been completed.  Graduate students Jianjun Hu and Zhun Fan recently completed their Ph.D.'s, supported as graduate research assistants on the project.  Important innovations arising from the project include the concept of Hierarchical Fair Competition, useful for many forms of evolutionary computation, and Structure Fitness Sharing, useful for synthesis of parameterized topologies.  About 20 papers were published as a result of this research.  Please see the project web pages for more information. Spinoff Company Releases HEEDS Software -- January '04 In 2003, Applied Computational Dynamics, Inc., a spinoff company based on work originated in the GARAGe, changed its name to Red Cedar Technology, Inc.  In January, 2004, the company announced the first release of its advanced HEEDS software -- Hierarchical Evolutionary Engineering Design System.  MSU will have a university license for its use by students and faculty.  Please see Red Cedar Technology's web pages for more information. Goodman Chairs ISGEC -- November '01 Erik Goodman, co-director of the GARAGe, was elected chair of the International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation by its Executive Board, on which he has served since its inception. The ISGEC organizes the annual GECCO conference and the biennial FOGA conference, and helps in support of two journals: 1)Evolutionary Computation, and 2) Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines. ISGEC members receive subscriptions to both. For more about ISGEC, visit the ISGEC web pages. For information about GECCO-2002, coming up in July in New York City, visit the GECCO-2002 web pages. Erik had just completed service as General Chair of GECCO-2001, the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation COnference, San Francisco, July 7-11, 2001. The conference was very successful, turning out to be the second-largest (after GECCO-99) conference EVER in the field of evolutionary computation, with over 550 attendees. For details about the meeting, visit the GECCO-2001 web pages. NSF Grant for Design Automation -- Sept '00 *** New grant from National Science Foundation on "Automated Design of Mechatronic Systems Using Bond Graphs and Genetic Programming" *** The award of a three-year research grant by the the DMII program at the NSF will allow a team including Erik Goodman (PI), Ron Rosenberg (co-PI and chair of Mechanical Engineering), Kisung Seo (co-PI and research associate), Zhun Fan (graduate research assistant, ECE), and Jianjun Hu (graduate research assistant, CSE) to conduct research in search of a method for automatically creating bond graphs that describe mechatronic systems, evolving them using genetic programming, based only on the user's specification of the function to be performed. See the "Papers" pages for some preliminary reports from the group. Spinoff Company Launched from GARAGe, Dec '99 In response to intense interest in making commercial use of new technologies developed by researchers in MSU's GARAGe and Computational Mechanics Research Group, three of the researchers have joined with a fourth party to form Applied Computational Design Associates, Inc. The new company, headquartered in Okemos, MI, offers consulting services to industry (with customers already in automotive, aerospace, marine, and civil infrastructure sectors) and is developing software for commercial release. The company is licensing from Michigan State University certain key software components which were developed by the researchers at the university, incorporating them in a full-featured commercial system with many added capabilities. lilgp Software Update Released -- Sept 98 New release of lilgp place on the garage web site. Please see the software page for more details. New Demo Pages re Flywheel Optimization -- April '98 A new demonstration page of our work in GA design of flywheels is available at the Flywheel Demo page. A number of new papers are available at the GARAGe Papers page, please take a look.

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