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Personal Summary

My current research is on the evolution of complexity which includes evolutionary computation, biological evolution, and the evolution of technology.

I have done research on the theory of evolutionary computation for over 30 years.  Prior to that I worked in pure mathematics (geometric topology) and applied mathematics (homotopiy fixed points)

My recreational activites include mountain and road biking, cross country skiing, hiking, and hunting.  He is an active board memer of the Rocky Mountaineers outdoor club and he maintains their website .

Education

• Missoula County High School 1960
• Dartmounth College, AB in Mathematics, 1964
• University of Wisconsin Madison, Ph.D. Mathematics, 1969

Courses Taught

Spring 2022

Cloud Computing

Tues. Thurs. 3:00 to 4:20  Social Science 362

CSCI 491 section 3   CRN 34388

CSCI 591 section 2   CRN 34389

Teaching Experience

Graduate teaching assistant in mathematics, University of Wisconsin, Madison 1968-69

Visiting assistant professor, Mathematics, University of Utah, 1969-79

Assistant professor, Mathematics, Western Michigan University, 1970-1975

Associate professor, Mathematics,  Western Michigan University, 1975-1980

Full professor, Mathematics,  Western Michigan University, 1975-1980

Associate professor, Computer Science, ÁÔÆæÖØ¿Ú, 1983-1986

Full professor, Computer Science, ÁÔÆæÖØ¿Ú, 1986-2009

Emeritus professor, Computer Science, ÁÔÆæÖØ¿Ú, 2009-present

Projects

Research Group Website

Field of Study

• Theory of Genetic Algorithms and Evolutionary Computation
• Genotype-phenotype maps in biology and evolutionary computation
• Artificial life

Selected Publications

Publications

Recent (and not so recent) Publications for Alden H. Wright:

Evolvability and Complexity Properties of the Digital Circuit Genotype-Phenotype Map by Alden H. Wright and Cheyenne L. Laue.  Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (pp. 840-848) 2021.

Landscape revolutions for cultural evolution: Integrating advanced fitness landscapes into the study of cultural change by Laue, C.L. and Wright, A.H.  Handbook of Evolutionary Research in Archaeology, pp. 127-147. Springer, Cham, 2019.

On the Movement of Vertex Fixed Points in the Simple GA by Alden H. Wright, Tomas Gedeon, J. Neal Richter. FOGA'11 Proceedings of the 2011 ACM/SIGEVO Foundations of Genetic Algorithms XI Association for Computing Machinery, 2011.

Periodical Switching between Related Goals for Improving Evolvability to a Fixed Goal in Multi-Objective Problems by Seppo J. Ovaska, Bernhard Sick, Alden H. Wright. Information Sciences vol. 179, pp. 4046-4056.

Representation Invariant Genetic Operators by Jon E. Rowe, M. D. Vose, Alden H. Wright. Evolutionary Computation vol. 18 (4), pp. 635-660.

Reinterpreting No Free Lunch by Jon E. Rowe, M. D. Vose, Alden H. Wright. Evolutionary Computation 17 (1) 2009, 117-129.

Ignoble Trails - where crossover is provably harmful by J. Neal Richter, Alden Wright, and John Paxton. 10th International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature: PPSN X 2008. Springer Verlag.

Quotients of Markov chains and asymptotic properties of the stationary distribution of the Markov chain associated to an evolutionary algorithm by Boris Mitavskiy, Jonathan Rowe, Alden Wright, Lothar Schmitt. Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines 2008, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 109-123.

Differentiable coarse graining by Jonathan E. Rowe, Michael D. Vose, and Alden H. Wright. Theoretical Computer Science vol. 361, no. 1, 2006, pp. 111-129.

Exploiting Quotients of Markov Chains to Derive Properties of the Stationary Distribution of the Markov chain associated to an Evolutionary Algorithm by Boris Mitavskiy, Jon E. Rowe, Alden H. Wright, Lothar Schmitt. Simulated Evolution and Learning, Proceedings of SEAL 2006, Lecture Notes in Computer Science v. 4247, pages 726-733, Springer Verlag, 2006.

Emergent Behaviour, Population-based Search and Low-pass Filtering by Riccardo Poli, Wright Alden, McPhee Nicholas and Langdon William IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, Vancouver, 2006 ISBN: 0-7803-9487-9. pp. 88-95.

Strong Recombination, Weak Selection, and Mutation, by Alden H. Wright and J. Neal Richter, GECCO 2006 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, Maarten Keijzer et al., editors. Association for Computing Machinery, 2006. Pages 1369--1376.

Estimation of Distribution Algorithm Based on Linkage Discovery and Factorization by Alden H. Wright and S.V.P.M.Sandeep Pulavarty, Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2005), edited by H. G. Beyer et al, ACM Press, 2005, pp. 695-703.

EA Models of Population Fixed Points Versus Mutations Rates for Functions of Unitation, by J. Neal Richter, John Paxton, Alden Wright. Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2005), edited by H. G. Beyer et al, ACM Press, 2005, pp. 1233-1241.

Perturbation theory and the renormalization group in genetic dynamics, by C. R. Stephens, A. Zamora, and A. Wright, Foundations of Genetic Algorithms, 8th International Workshop, FOGA 2005, Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan. Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 3469. Edited by A. H. Wright, M. D. Vose, K. A. De Jong, L. M. Schmitt. Springer, 2005.

Coarse graining selection and mutation, by Jonathan E. Rowe, Michael D. Vose, and Alden H. Wright, Foundations of Genetic Algorithms, 8th International Workshop, FOGA 2005, Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan. Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 3469. Edited by A. H. Wright, M. D. Vose, K. A. De Jong, L. M. Schmitt.

Foundations of Genetic Algorithms, 8th International Workshop, FOGA 2005, Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan. Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 3469. Edited by A. H. Wright, M. D. Vose, K. A. De Jong, L. M. Schmitt.

Bistability of the Needle Function in the Presence of Truncation Selection (with Greg Cripe), Proceedings of GECCO 2004, Editors: K. Deb et al., Springer Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science LNCS3103, 2004, pp. 330-342.

An Estimation of Distribution Algorithm Based On Maximum Entropy (with Riccardo Poli, Chris Stephens, W. B. Landgon, and Sandeep Pulavarty), Proceedings of GECCO 2004, Editors: K. Deb et al., Springer Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science LNCS3103, 2004, pp. 343-354.

Efficient Linkage Discovery by Limited Probing (with Robert Heckendorn), Evolutionary Computation vol. 12, no. 4, 2004, pp. 517-545.

State aggregation and population dynamics in linear systems (with Jonathan E. Rowe and Michael D. Vose), Artificial Life vol. 11, no. 4, 2005, pp. 473-492.

Implicit Parallelism (with Michael D. Vose and Jonathan E. Rowe), Proceedings of GECCO 2003, Editors: Erick Cantu-Paz et al., Springer Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2003, pp. 1003-1014.

Efficient Linkage Discovery by Limited Probing (with Robert Heckendorn), Proceedings of GECCO 2003, Editors: Erick Cantu-Paz et al., Springer Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2003, pp. 1003-1014.

Bistability in a Gene Pool GA with Mutation (with Jonathan E. Rowe, Christopher R. Stephens, and Ricardo Poli) FOGA 7 (Foundations of Genetic Algorithms 7), Morgan Kaufmann, 2003 pages 63-80

Group Properties of Crossover and Mutation (with Jonathan E. Rowe and Michael D. Vose) Evolutionary Computation 10(2), 2002, pages 151-184.

A Fixed Point Analysis of a Gene Pool GA with Mutation (with Jonathan E. Rowe, Riccardo Poli, and Christopher R. Stephens) Proceedings of GECCO 2002, Morgan Kaufmann

Analysis of the Simple Genetic Algorithm on the Single-peak and Double-peak Landscapes (with Jonathan E. Rowe and James R. Neil) Proceedings of CEC 2002, IEEE Press

Allele Diffusion in Linear Genetic Programming and Variable-Length Genetic Algorithms with Subtree Crossover (by Ricardo Poli, Jonathan E. Rowe, Chris Stephens, and Alden H. Wright) Tech Report CSM-350 Department of Computer Science, University of Essex, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK.

Form Invariance and Implicit Parallelism (with Michael D. Vose) Evolutionary Computation 9(3), 2001, pages 355-370.

Cyclic and Chaotic Behavior in Genetic Algorithms (with Alexandru Agapie), GECCO-2001 (Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference) (Morgan Kaufmann) pages 718-724.

The Computational Complexity of N-K Fitness Functions (with Richard K. Thompson and Jiang Zhang) IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation 4(4), 2000, pages 373-379.

Continuous Dynamical System Models of Steady-State Genetic Algorithms (with Jon Rowe) FOGA 6 (Foundations of Genetic Algorithms 6), Morgan Kaufmann, 2001

The Exact Schema Theorem (last revised 9/30/99 to add more references to previous work)

Markov Chain Models of Genetic Algorithms, (with Yong Zhao), GECCO-99 (Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference) (Morgan Kaufmann)

The Simple Genetic Algorithm and the Walsh Transform: part I: Theory, (with Michael D. Vose), Evolutionary Computation 6 (3), 1998, pages 253-274.

The Simple Genetic Algorithm and the Walsh Transform: part II: The Inverse, (with Michael D. Vose), Evolutionary Computation 6 (3), 1998, pages 275-289.

A Search for Counterexamples of Two Conjectures on the Simple Genetic Algorithm, (with Garrett Bidwell), published in Foundations of Genetic Algorithms 4, edited by Richard K. Belew and Michael D. Vose, Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, 1997.

Simple Genetic Algorithms with Linear Fitness, (with Michael D. Vose), Evolutionary Computation, vol. 2, number 4 (1994).

Stability of Vertex Fixed Points and Applications, (with Michael D. Vose), Foundations of Genetic Algorithms 3, edited by L. Darrell Whitley and Michael D. Vose, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Francisco, 1995.

Finiteness of the Fixed Point Set for the Simple Genetic Algorithm, (with Michael D. Vose), Evolutionary Computation, vol. 3, number 4 (1995).

[Request a Copy]

The Walsh Transform and the Theory of the Simple Genetic Algorithm, Genetic Algorithms for Pattern Recognition, (edited by Sankar K. Pal and Paul P. Wang), CRC Press, 1996.

[Request a Copy]

Additively Decomposable Fitness Functions, (with Richard K. Thompson), (technical report)

Genetic algorithms for real parameter optimization, Foundations of Genetic Algorithms, (edited by Gregory J. E. Rawlins), Morgan Kaufman, pp. 205-218 (1991).

A Hierarchical Genetic System for Symbolic Function Identification, (with Minga Jiang), Proceedings of the Interface 92 Conference on the Interface between Computer Science and Statistics. (1992).

Diploidy talk for Miniconference on Optimization, UM, 9/12/96 Diploidy and Overdominiance in Genetic Algorithms

O(k) Parallel Algorithms for Approximate String Matching, Neural, Parallel, and Scientific Computations, 1 (1993) 443-452.

Approximate String Matching using Within-word Parallelism, Software Practice and Experience, 24(4), 337-362 (April 1994).

Development and validation of a knowledge-based system to design fire prescriptions" with Elizabeth D. Reinhardt, principal author, and David H. Jackson, AI Applications in Natural Resource Management, vol. 6, no. 4 (1992).

"An advisory expert system for designing fire prescriptions", (with Elizabeth Reinhardt, and David H. Jackson), Ecological Modeling, 46 (1989), 13 pages.

"Using Artificial Intelligence Techniques to Build a Fire Effects Information System", (with William C. Fisher), The Compiler, Vol. 5, Nov/Dec, pp. 28-35, (1987).

"Finding all complex roots of a system of polynomial equations", Mathematics of Computation, Vol. 44, pp. 125-133 (1985).

Affiliations

• Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• ACM Special Interest Group on Evolutionary Computing (SIGEVO)

International Experience

Sabbatical at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand from January to the end of June, 2011.

Sabbatical at the University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK for the 2001-2002 academic year.

Honors / Awards

Phi Beta Kappa Dartmouth College 1964

NSF Graduate Fellowship 1964-1968

Hobbies

• Mountain Biking
• Road Biking (including tandem with wife Sally)
• Cross Country Skiing
• Hiking
• Hunting
• Reading, especially about science and technology