Larry Yaeger

Professor of Informatics

E-mail
Phone: (812) 856-1845
Office: Informatics East, Room 305
Hours: See the class web page or check my work calendar
Web Site: www.beanblossom.in.us/larryy

Other Titles

Cognitive Science Core Faculty
Instructor, I210 Introduction to Programming in C
Instructor, I486/I586 Artificial Life as an approach to Artificial Intelligence

Research Interests

Artificial Life, Complexity, Information Theory, Neural Networks, Artificial Intelligence, Cognition, Computer Graphics, Genetic Algorithms, Ecological Simulation, Evolution, Handwriting Recognition

Research Projects

Education

B.S. Aerospace Engineering at Purdue University, 1972
M.S. Aerospace Engineering at Polytechnic Institute of New York, 1974

Biography

Prof. Yaeger has used computers to solve a wide variety of problems throughout his career. Having studied aerospace engineering, with a focus on computers, he carried out pioneering computational fluid dynamic flow studies over the space shuttle and submarines.

As director of software development at Digital Productions, he used a Cray X-MP supercomputer to generate the first photo-realistic computer graphics in a feature film, The Last Starfighter, as well as providing CGI effects for 2010, Labyrinth, and a number of Clio Award-winning television commercials.

While with Alan Kay's Vivarium program at Apple Computer, he designed and programmed a computer "voice" for Koko the gorilla, helped introduce Macintoshes into routine production on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and created a widely respected Artificial Life computational ecology ("Polyworld") that evolves neural architectures resulting from the mutation and cross-over of genetic codes, via behavior-based, sexual reproduction of artificial organisms. He also co-authored possibly the first book + CD-ROM title, the multiple award-winning Visualization of Natural Phenomena.

As part of Apple's Advanced Technology Group, he was technical lead in the development of the neural network-based hand-print recognition system in second generation Newton PDAs and Mac OS X's Inkwell. For eight years before joining Indiana University he telecommuted for Apple from scenic Beanblossom, Indiana, where he continues to reside (despite the fact that his commute got a lot longer as a result of taking a local job).

Since joining IU he has taught classes on "Artificial Life as an approach to Artificial Intelligence", ported Polyworld to modern personal computers, and released it as open source on SourceForge. He has also collaborated with faculty and students to extend Polyworld, demonstrating positive evolutionary trends in an information-theoretic measure of the complexity of neural structure and function, and near-optimal, ideal free distributions of Polyworld agents to heterogeneous resources. With faculty at IU and elsewhere he co-organized the Artificial Life X conference held here at IU June 3-7, 2006.