Evolutionary Computation Research Group

Meetings

• The weekly meeting for staff and research project students is on Wednesday 11:00-1:00, CO255.
• The staff members and Thesis students meet regularly on Friday 3-5pm in CO255 every week.

Staff

• Dr Mengjie Zhang (Associate Professor/Reader, Group Leader) - Genetic Programming, Particle Swarm Optimisation, Evolutionary Computer Vision, Multi-Objective Optimisation, Data Mining and Machine Learning
• Dr Will Browne (Senior Lecturer) - Learning Classifier Systems, Machine Learning, Applied Cognitive Systems
• Dr Mark Johnston (Lecturer) - Genetic Programming, Operations Research, Evolutionary Multi-Objective Optimisation
• Kouroush Neshatian (Research Fellow/BuildIT Postdoctoral Fellowship)- Genetic Programming, Classification, Feature Ranking and Selection, Dimension Reduction
• Dr Ammar Mohemmed (Research Fellow) - Particle Swarm Optimisation

Current Thesis and Research Project Students

Below is a list of out current (and incoming) research thesis and project students. You can also check our completed research students and their projects.

• Urvesh Bhowan, Genetic Programming for Classification with Unbalanced Data, PhD Thesis. 2009. BuildIT PhD Scholarship and Marsden PhD Scholarship. (with A/Prof Mengjie Zhang and Dr MarkJohnston)
• Mahdi Setayesh, Particle Swarm Optimisation for Image Analysis, PhD Thesis. 2009. Victoria PhD Scholarship. (with A/Prof Mengjie Zhang and Dr Mark Johnston)
• Rohitash Chandra, Cooperative Co-evolution for training recurrent neural networks, PhD Thesis. 2009. Victoria PhD Scholarship. (with Dr Marcus Frean and A/Prof Mengjie Zhang)
• Kourosh Neshatian, Feature Manipulation via Genetic Programming, PhD Thesis. 2007. Victoria PhD Scholarship. (with| A/Prof Mengjie Zhang and Dr Peter Andreae)
• Will Smart, Schemata Analysis in Genetic programming, PhD Thesis. 2005. VC's Strategic PhD Scholarship. (with A/Prof Mengjie Zhang and Dr Peter Andreae)
• David Kinzett, Numerical Simplification of Evolved Programs in Genetic Programming. MSc Thesis. 2007 (Part-time). (With A/Prof Mengjie Zhang)
• Wenlong (Bruce) Fu, Particle Swarm Optimisation for Image Recognition. PhD Thesis. 2010. VC's Strategic PhD Scholarship. (with Dr Mark Johnston and A/Prof Mengjie Zhang)
• Sara Sharifzadeh. Genetic Programming. PhD Thesis. 2010. Victoria PhD Scholarship. (With A/Prof Mengjie Zhang)
• Nabeel Younus Khan. Genetic Programming for Image Analysis. PhD Thesis. 2010. Victoria PhD Scholarship. (With A/Prof Mengjie Zhang) (incoming)
• Mario Andrés Muñoz. Particle Swarm Optimisation. PhD Thesis. 2010. Victoria PhD Scholarship. (with Dr Mark Johnston and A/Prof Mengjie Zhang) (incoming)
• Muhammad Iqbal. Learning Classifier Systems. PhD Thesis. 2010. Victoria PhD Scholarship. (with Dr Will Browne and A/Prof Mengjie Zhang) (incoming)
• Carlton Downey. Linear Genetic Programming for Multi-class Classification. MSc Thesis. 2010. Victoria Masters Scholarship. (with A/Prof Mengjie Zhang)
• Daniel Atkins. Evolutionary Art and Image Generation. Summer Research Scholarship. Nov 2009 -- Feb 2010. (with A/Prof Mengjie Zhang and Dr Will Browne)
• Jan Larres. Genetic Programming for Evolving Loops and Recursive Structures for Classification. Summer Research Scholarship. Nov 2009 -- Feb 2010. (with A/Prof Mengjie Zhang and Dr Will Browne)
• Lee Macri. PSO for Image Recognition. Summer Research Scholarship. Nov 2009 -- Feb 2010. (with A/Prof Mengjie Zhang and Dr Will Browne)
• Thomas Liddle. Evolutionary Multi-objective Optimisation for Object detection. Summer Research Scholarship. Nov 2009 -- Feb 2010. (with Dr Mark Johnston and A/Prof Mengjie Zhang)
• Rachel Hunt. Genetic Programming with Class Imbalance Problems. Summer Research Assistant. Nov 2009 -- Feb 2010. (with Dr Mark Johnston, A/Prof Mengjie Zhang and Dr Will Browne)
• Chris Bruniges. Evolutionary Computing for Car Racing. Summer Research Assistant. Nov 2009 -- Feb 2010. (with Dr Will Browne and A/Prof Mengjie Zhang)
• Ben Haughey. Learning Classifier Systems. Summer Research Assistant. Nov 2009 -- Feb 2010. (with Dr Will Browne and A/Prof Mengjie Zhang)

Highlighted Research Areas

Here is some information on some of the research projects undertaken within the group, also see individual staff research interests for other areas of research:

• Genetic Programming for Feature Ranking and Selection? (Mengjie Zhang, Kourosh Neshatian)
• GP for Classification with Unbalanced Data? (Mengjie Zhang, Urvesh Bhowan, Mark Johnston)
• Evolutionary Computer Vision? (Mengjie Zhang)
• Particle Swarm Optimisation (Mengjie Zhang, Mark Johnston, Will Browne, Ammar Mohemmad, MahdiSetayesh, Lee Macri)
• Learning Classifier Systems (Will Browne, Ben Haughey)
• Evolutionary Multi-objective Optimisation (Mengjie Zhang, Mark Johnston, Will Browne, Kourosh Neshatian, Urvesh Bhowan, Thomas Liddle)
• Linear Genetic Programming? (Mengjie Zhang, Carlton Downey)
• Evolutionary Art ...

Research Funding

• Mengjie Zhang. Toward Optimal Offspring Selection in Genetic Programming. BuildIT Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, New Zealand. 2009-2011. Grant: $123,053.
• Mengjie Zhang. Genetic Programming for Classification Tasks. Marsden Fund of New Zealand, 2009-2012. Grant: $465,000.
• Mengjie Zhang. Novel Program Structures and Search Algorithms in Genetic Programming, Marsden Fund of New Zealand, 2006-2008. Grant: $140,000.
• Guifa Teng, Mengjie Zhang, etc. Identification of Authors in Chinese Email, Natural Science Fundation of Hebei Province, China, 2006-2008. Grant: $50,000.
• David Crabbe, Mengjie Zhang, Paul Warren, Peter Andreae, Irina Elgort, Huayang Xie. Machine Learning for Speech Recognition, New Economy Research Fund, 2001-2004. Grant: $330,000.

• Mengjie Zhang, Mark Johnston. Novel PSO Topologies and Search Algorithms for Pattern Classification. University Research Fund, Victoria University of Wellington, 2009-2010. Grant: $25,000.
• Mark Johnston, Mengjie Zhang. Evolutionary Multiple-criterion Optimization for Visual Object Detection. University Research Fund, Victoria University of Wellington, 2009-2010. Grant: $20,000.
• Mengjie Zhang, Mark Johnston. Particle Swarm Optimisation for Image Recognition. University Research Fund, Victoria University of Wellington, 2008-2009. Grant: $38,239.
• Mark Johnston, Mengjie Zhang. Simplification and Class Imbalance in Genetic Programming. University Research Fund, Victoria University of Wellington, 2008-2009. Grant: $22,580.
• Mengjie Zhang. Genetic Programming for Image Recognition, University Research Fund, Victoria University of Wellington, 2007. Grant: $48,000.
• Mengjie Zhang. Program Representations in Genetic Programming, University Research Fund, Victoria University of Wellington, 2005-2006. Grant: $45,500.
• Mengjie Zhang, Peter Andreae. Genetic Programming for Multiclass Classification, University Research Fund, Victoria University of Wellington, 2004-2005. Grant: $25,000.
• Mengjie Zhang, Peter Andreae. Novel Genetic Programming Techniques for Image Recognition Tasks, University Research Fund, Victoria University of Wellington, 2004. Grant: $12,200.

Selected Publications

• Genetic Programming
• Particle Swarm Optimisation
• Learning Classifier Systems
• Evolutionary Multi-objective Optimisation
• Evolutionary Computer Vision, Image Analysis and Signal Processing

Upcoming Conferences

• Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference GECCO 2010
• Special Session on Evolutionary Computer Vision for 2010 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, part of IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence WCCI 2010.
• The 8th International Conference on Simulated Evolution and Learning (SEAL 2010)
• The 10th Asian Conference on Computer Vision (ACCV 2010)
• The 23rd Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI 2010)

PhD Sholarships

Good students (GPA of A- or above) can apply for the following scholarships. Contact any of the staff members in our research group.

• Victoria PhD scholarship (Closing dates: 1 March, 1 July, 1 November 2010, for both domestic and international students)

• BuildIT PhD Scholarship (Closing date: 30 April, 30 November 2010)

• New Zealand International Doctoral Research Scholarships (NZIDRS) (Closing date: 15 July 2010. International students only.)

Postdoctoral Opportunities

The Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FRST) have funding for Post-Doctoral students. The applicant is a doctorate who wishes to undertake post-doctoral research, rather than the University/School/research group. This research group is happy to advise a candidate in writing the proposal in the field of evolutionary computation, especially learning classifier systems, genetic programming and related techniques.The deadline for completed applications at VUW is 29th March 2010. There is a second round later in the year usually in September (dates TBA).

The scheme is highly contested and success requires a comprehensive application and considerable time commitment. Applicants should note the eligibility requirements in the Request for Proposals (RFP).

Contact any of the staff members in our research group if you're interested in applying.

• FRST Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme 29 March – completed applications on the portal
  http://www.frst.govt.nz/funding/students/postdoc
  $61k salary plus $30.5k research costs for up to three years to fund a postdoc.