Dr Marcus Frean

BSc (Hons) in Physics, Massey University; PhD, Edinburgh

Position	Senior Lecturer
Responsibilities	Programme Director - COMP
Research Interests	Machine Learning, Theoretical and Computational Biology
Publications	Publications Listing
Office	CO443 - Postal Address
Phone	+64 4 463 5672
Email	Marcus.Frean@ecs.vuw.ac.nz

Teaching

Teaching in 2010: COMP 103 COMP 421 COMP 489 COMP 588 ECSE 489

Biography

Marcus is in the Artificial Intelligence group and has interests in machine learning, complex adaptive systems, and evolutionary dynamics.

• Marcus's calendar
• publications (curated list, not the auto-generated one above).
• books on loan

	The Festival of Doubt is an interdisciplinary discussion series on complex adaptive systems.		An élite team of crack post-graduate students. Examples: past projects.
	COMP 421 is an honours course in Machine learning - I have also occasionally taught a reading course on complex adaptive systems		COMP 307 is our 3rd year Introduction to AI course
	COMP 103, "Data structures and algorithms".		Previously: COMP101, an introduction to computer science via dynamic web design, and Applied Bioinformatics at 3rd/4th year level.

Research

	Gaussian process models in machine learning, specifically how they might be used to carry out efficient optimization in domains where data is expensive or risky to obtain. The technique can be extended to model multiple dependent outputs - an application of this is that it allows "cheap" data to be used as a proxy for "expensive" data.
	I'm interested in Bayesian inference via probability propagation in graphical models such as restricted Boltzmann machines and deep belief nets
	Topographic projections in the brain, specifically the retinotectal projection. The mush in your head wires itself up by matching molecular cues between the innervating axons and their targets elsewhere in the brain. Despite a wealth of interesting data, there is still argument about exactly how this process of self-organisation occurs - particularly given its astonishing robustness to damage and other interference.
	With Gareth Baxter I've been studying the effect that network structure has on the rate of evolution.
	One of my long-standing interests is the Prisoner's Dilemma and its effect on the evolution of cooperation, particularly the strong effects of space and of timing on the cooperative strategies that we might expect natural selection to come up with.
	The evolution of enslavement - how natural selection can warp mutually productive relationships into exploitative ones. In particular this might explain why some endosymbionts cooperate with their hosts while others are parasitic.
	With Edward Abraham I have studied rock-scissors-paper situations in ecological systems. Such systems show paradoxical behaviour - for example the slowest invader is the one most likely to survive while its competitors go extinct - a phenomenon we dubbed "survival of the weakest".
	With Richard Mansfield, I showed how the 3-way competition could arise from even simpler systems of just two species, or even one.
	With Joseph Bulbulia I've been thinking about how humans are so good at forming ad hoc cooperative groups, and how this relates to possible evolutionary drivers behind our strong religious tendencies.

Losing to Peter Whigham for the papers:

Don't forget the genepool

My personal Twiki: http://homepages.ecs.vuw.ac.nz/Users/Marcus/

• FightClub.jar: Fight club - simulation of evolution + fighting

• FightClub.jar: Some Darwinian Creatures

• FightClub.jar: Some Darwinian Creatures

• FightClub.jar: FightClub.jar