My interests center around using procedural models (computer programs) to simulate complex natural phenomenon. These models can aid scientific understanding of the natural system. They also allow us to recreate the phenomenon and control it for use in animation, games and the arts.

Much of my work involves writing software to simulate various types of human and animal behavior. These programs control the actions of autonomous characters in virtual worlds. I started by simulating bird flocks and related group behaviors. That approach was generalized to other kinds of goal directed steering behaviors. Later I applied these ideas to models of emergent teamwork in crowds, such as collective construction based on stigmergy, as seen in social insects.

I am also interested in using evolutionary computation to design procedural models, such as for behavioral control and texture synthesis. This requires designing criteria for evolving subtle properties that can be hard to define. My most recent work in this area involves modeling the evolution of camouflage in nature. See these notes about a newer version of this work. This work has been accepted for the proceedings of the 2023 Conference on Artificial Life. See this preprint: Coevolution of Camouflage.

I retired in 2020, and am now an unaffiliated researcher working on my own projects.

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8203-712X

Last update: June 8, 2023