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Richard A. Watson |
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Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dept. of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology 2102
Biological Laboratories rwatson@oeb.harvard.edu |
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Research Interests |
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I am interested in understanding what impact different genetic variation mechanisms and different ecological scenarios have on evolvability. One particularly interesting class of mechanisms are 'compositional' mechanisms that combine together subsets of genetic material that have been previously adapted in parallel lineages. Such mechanisms may include sexual recombination in subdivided populations, and interspecific genetic integration via endosymbiosis and symbiogenesis. It has previously been suggested that symbiotic mechanisms provide an alternative to gradual, or 'accretive', evolutionary change, but there has been disagreement about what impact (if any) these mechanisms have on our understanding of evolutionary processes. Thus far, it has been unclear what types of systems, if any, can be evolved by compositional mechanisms that cannot be evolved by accretive mechanisms. My research takes an interdisciplinary approach to this question by building abstract computational simulations of accretive and compositional mechanisms. In my PhD work I identified a class of complex systems possessing 'modular interdependency', incorporating highly epistatic but modular substructure. This class typifies characteristics that are pathological for accretive evolution - the corresponding fitness landscape is highly rugged, has many local optima creating broad fitness saddles, and includes 'irreducibly complex' adaptations that cannot be reached by a succession of gradually changing proto-systems. However, this class of system is in fact easily evolvable under sexual recombination or 'symbiotic encapsulation'. This shows that our na•ve understanding of what is unevolvable or evolutionarily unlikely is dependent on the assumption of accretive mechanisms, and that different mechanisms can exhibit fundamentally different adaptive capacities. This work has built upon evolutionary computation techniques used in computer science ö and, more generally, I am interested in working to close the loop from the well-established field of evolutionary computation back to the evolutionary biology that inspired it. The use of computational paradigms provides a means to address the fundamental algorithmic principles underlying different biological adaptive mechanisms. For example, compositional mechanisms are interesting because they are analogous to methods of 'divide and conquer' problem decomposition whereas accretive mechanisms are analogous to simple hill-climbing methods. However, coming from a CS background, it is also easy to oversimplify, (or at least, to abstract the systems of interest in ways that are different from the ways that evolutionary biologists usually abstract them). In the Wakeley Lab I will be looking to recast the previous results to connect better with existing theoretical evolutionary biology, and for other issues/areas that may admit interdisciplinary cross-fertilization. |
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Background |
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My previous work in evolutionary
algorithms (genetic algorithms), coevolution, cooperative coevolution, Pareto
coevolution, evolutionary robotics (embodied evolution), models of symbiosis
and the major evolutionary transitions (including the Symbiogenic
Evolutionary Adaptation Model, SEAM), the Baldwin effect and symbiotic
scaffolding, and work on the Building Block Hypothesis and GA test problems
(including Hierarchical-if-and-only-if, HIFF) is discussed at my
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PhD dissertation |
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Qualifications |
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Ph.D., Computer Science, M.Sc.,
Knowledge Based Systems, B.A., Computing with Artificial Intelligence, |
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Publications |
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Watson, R.A.
(2003). Hierarchical Module Discovery. Papers from 2003 AAAI Spring
Symposium - Computational Synthesis: From Basic Building Blocks to High Level
Functionality, AAAI Press. Lipson, H., Antonsson, E.K. and Koza, J.R., Cochairs
(Technical Report SS-03-02). pp. 262 link Watson, R.A.
(2003). Modular Interdependency in Complex Dynamical
Systems. Workshop Proceedings of the 8th International
Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems, Eds. Bilotta et
al., UNSW Lenaerts, T.
Gross, D. and Watson, R.A. (2003). On the Modelling of Dynamical Hierarchies:
Introduction to the Workshop WDH 2002. Workshop Proceedings of the 8th International Conference
on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems, Eds. Bilotta et al.,
UNSW Watson, R.A. and
Pollack, J.B. (2002). A Computational Model of Symbiotic
Composition in Evolutionary Transitions (PREPRINT) .
Biosystems Special Issue on
Evolvability, vol. 69/2-3 pp 187-209. Watson, R.A.
(2002). Compositional
Evolution: Interdisciplinary Investigations in Evolvability, Modularity, and
Symbiosis. PhD Dissertation, Knowles, J.D. and
Watson, R.A. (2002) On the Utility of Redundant Encodings in Mutation-based
Evolutionary Search. In J.J. Merelo et al. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Parallel Problem
Solving from Nature (PPSN-VII). Copyright Springer-Verlag.
Download: Postscript,
PDF
Knowles, J.D.,
Watson, R.A., Corne, D.W. (2001) Reducing
Local Optima in Single-Objective Problems by Multi-objectivization .
(PDF) In Proceedings of the First International
Conference on Evolutionary Multi-criterion Optimization (EMO'01), pp.
269--283, copyright Springer-Verlag.
Watson, R.A. and
Pollack, J.B. (2001). Symbiotic
Composition and Evolvability. Advances in Artificial Life, 6th
European Conference, (ECAL 2001) , Watson, R.A. and
Pollack, J.B. (2001). Coevolutionary
Dynamics in a Minimal Substrate. Proceedings of the 2001 Genetic
and Evolutionary Computation Conference, Spector, L, et al (eds.), Morgan
Kaufmann, 2001. Noble, J. and
Watson, R.A. (2001). Pareto
coevolution: Using performance against coevolved opponents in a game as
dimensions for Pareto selection . In Spector, L., Goodman, E., Wu,
A., Langdon, W.B., Voigt, H.-M., Gen, M., Sen, S., Dorigo, M., Pezeshk, S.,
Garzon, M., & Burke, E. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Genetic and
Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO-2001, pp. 493-500. Morgan
Kauffman, De Jong, Edwin D.,
Watson, Richard A. and Pollack, Jordan
B., Lipson, Hod, Ficici, Sevan G., Funes, Pablo, Hornby, Greg and Watson,
Richard A. (2001). .
"Evolutionary Techniques in Physical Robots," in Creative
Evolutionary Systems, Peter J. Bently and David W. Corne (eds).
Morgan-Kaufmann, 2001. Watson, R.A. (2001).
Analysis
of Recombinative Algorithms on a Non-Separable Building-Block Problem.
Foundations of Genetic Algorithms, Volume 6 , proceedings of FOGA VI,
Charlottesville, VA, July 21-23, 2000, Edited by Worthy N. Martin and William
M. Spears, Morgan Kaufmann. Watson, R.A. ,
Reil, T. and Pollack, J.B. (2000). Mutualism,
Parasitism, and Evolutionary Adaptation. Proceedings of Artificial
Life VII, Bedau, M, McCaskill, J, Packard, N, Rasmussen, S (eds.), 2000. Watson, Richard
A., Ficici, Sevan G. and Pollack, J. B.,
Lipson. H., , Ficici, S., Funes, P., Hornby, G. and Watson, R. (2000). Evolutionary
Techniques in Physical Robotics. Miller, J. (ed) Evolvable
Systems: from biology to hardware; proceedings of the third international
conference (ICES 2000). Springer (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Vol.
1801). pp. 175-186. Shipman, R.,
Shackleton, M., Ebner, M. and Watson, R.A. (2000). Neutral
Search Spaces for Artificial Evolution: A Lesson from Life. Proceedings
of Artificial Life VII, Bedau, M, McCaskill, J, Packard, N, Rasmussen, S
(eds.), 2000. Watson, R.A. and
Pollack, J.B. (2000). Recombination
Without Respect: Schema Combination and Disruption in Genetic Algorithm
Crossover. Proceedings of the 2000 Genetic and Evolutionary
Computation Conference, Whitley, D., et al (eds.), Morgan Kaufmann, 2000.
Watson, R.A. and
Pollack, J.B. (2000). Symbiotic
Combination as an Alternative to Sexual Recombination in Genetic Algorithms.
Proceedings of Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSNVI), Marc
Schoenauer, Kalyanmoy Deb, Guenter Rudolph, Xin Yao, Evelyne Lutton, Juan
Julian Merelo, Hans-Paul Schwefel (Eds)., 2000. Springer Verlag, Lecture Notes in Computer
Science 1917 © Springer-Verlag. Ebner, M., Watson,
R.A., and Alexander, J. (2000). Co-evolutionary dynamics on a deformable
landscape In Proceedings of the 2000 Congress on Evolutionary Computation,
San Diego Marriott Hotel, Watson, Richard
A., Ficici, Sevan G. and Ficici, Sevan G.,
Watson, R.A. and Pollack, J. B. (1999). Embodied
Evolution: A Response to Challenges in Evolutionary Robotics. Eighth
European Workshop on Learning Robots. Jeremy L. Wyatt, John Demiris,
eds., 14-22. Watson, R.A. and
Pollack, J.B. (1999). Incremental
Commitment in Genetic Algorithms . Proceedings of 1999 Genetic and
Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 99). Banzhaf, Daida, Eiben,
Garzon, Honavar, Jakiela, Smith, eds., Morgan Kauffmann, pp.710-717. Watson, R.A. and
Pollack, J.B. (1999). Hierarchically-Consistent
Test Problems for Genetic Algorithms . Proceedings of 1999
Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC 99). Angeline, Michalewicz,
Schoenauer, Watson, R.A. and
Pollack, J.B. (1999). How
Symbiosis Can Guide Evolution . Fifth European Conference on
Artificial Life. Dario Floreano, Jean-Daniel Nicoud, Francesco Mondada,
eds. Springer, 1999. Watson, Richard A.
, Hornby, G. S. and Pollack, J. B. (1998). Modeling
Building-Block Interdependency . Parallel Problem Solving from
Nature, proceedings of Fifth International Conference /PPSN V, Springer
1998, pp.97-106.
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rwatson@oeb.harvard.edu |
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