Emma Hart
Emma Hart

Prof Emma Hart

Professor

 0131 455 2783

  E.Hart@napier.ac.uk

  

Biography

Prof. Hart gained a 1st Class Honours Degree in Chemistry from the University of Oxford, followed by an MSc in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh. Her PhD, also from the University of Edinburgh, explored the use of immunology as an inspiration for computing, examining a range of techniques applied to optimisation and data classification problems. 

She moved to Edinburgh Napier University in 2000 as a lecturer, and was promoted to a Chair in 2008 where she leads a group in Nature-Inspired Intelligent Systems, specialising in optimisation and learning algorithms applied in domains that range from combinatorial optimisation to robotics. Her work mainly involves development of algorithms inspired by biological evolution to discover novel solutions to challenging problems.

She was appointed as Editor-in-Chief of Evolutionary Computation (MIT Press) in 2017. She has been invited to give keynotes at major international conferences including CLAIO 2020, IEEE CEC 2019, EURO 2016 and UKCI 2015 and was General Chair of PPSN 2016, and as a Track Chair at GECCO for several years. She is an elected member of the Executive Board of the ACM SIG on Evolutionary Computation.

More broadly, she invited member of the UK Operations Research Society Research Panel, and in Scotland, co-leads the Artificial Intelligence theme within SICSA. She was appointed as a panel member for REF2021 (UoA11 Computer Science). In 2020 she was appointed to the Steering Committee that developed Scotland's AI Strategy published in 2021 . She has a sustained track record of obtaining funding from the EU, EPSRC and of engaging with industry via KTP projects and consultancy, and participates enthusiastically in public-engagement activity, e.g Pint of Science.

Her work in evolutionary robotics has attracted significant media attention, e.g. in New Scientist, the Guardian, Telegraph and the Conversation. In 2021, she gave a TED Talk on Evolutionary Robotics, available online

School

Research Groups

Themes

Research Areas

News

Events

Esteem

Advisory panels and expert committees or witness

  • Scottish Government Steering Committee: AI Strategy
  • Royal Society’s International Networks Committee
  • Invited to co-lead SICSA Research Theme on Artificial Intelligence
  • Member of Royal Society delegation of UK scientists in UK-Russia Frontiers of Science Symposium (Kazan)
  • Elected to the Executive Board of the ACM Special Interest Group SIGEVO
  • Invited to join the IEEE CIS Evolutionary Computation Technical Committee for 2012
  • Appointed to the UK Operational Research Society Research Panel

 

Conference Organising Activity

  • Senior Program Committee Member AAAI-19
  • Track Chair: Complex Systems @ GECCO 2017
  • General Chair of PPSN 2016, Edinburgh
  • Technical chair of IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computing (CEC), 2009
  • Workshop co-chair: ALIFE 2016, 2nd Workshop on Steering Complex Systems (Cancun, Mexico)
  • Workshop Chair: IEEE SASO, 2nd Workshop on Fundamentals of Collective Systems, London,
  • Workshop Chair: IEEE SASO 2011, 1st Workshop on Self-Awareness in Autonomic Computing USA
  • Workshop Chair, Real-World-Optimisation @ GECCO 2013
  • Workshop Chair: 2nd Awareness workshop at IIEEE SASO 2012 : Challenges for Achieving Self-awareness in Autonomic Systems
  • Technical Chair BioNETICS 2009, Avignon
  • General Chair: 9th International Conference on Artificial Immune Systems at Edinburgh Napier
  • Technical Chair of Bionetics 2011, York, UK
  • Chair of Workshop in Self-Organisation in Pervasive Adaptive Systems, at IEEE SASO 2010, Budapest. 28th September 2010
  • Track Chair: Artificial Immune Systems at GECCO 2014, an ACM SIGEVO Conference.
  • Track Chair: Artificial Immune Systems and Biological and Medical Applications, Genetic & Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO 2016
  • Track Chair. Real-World Applications of Optimisation at GECCO 2015 (ACM)
  • Workshop Chair: • ECAL 2013, 1st Workshop on Fundamentals of Collective Systems, Italy
  • Co-chair and organiser, Dagstuhl Seminar on Artificial Immune Systems, 2011
  • Workshop co-chair: Steering Complex Adaptive Systems, ECAL 2015: 12th International Conference on Artificial Life
  • Program Chair of the ninth IEEE International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self- Organizing Systems (2015)

 

Editorial Activity

  • Associate Editor of the Journal of Evolutionary Computation (MITPress)
  • Guest Editor: Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience (Special Issue on Collective Adaptive Systems)
  • Guest Editor: Swarm Intelligence: (Special Issue on Artificial Immune Systems) 2010
  • Editorial Board: International Journal Metaheuristics
  • Editor-in-Chief of Evolutionary Computation (MIT Press)
  • Guest Editor: Special Issue of J. Evolutionary Intelligence on Aspects of Artificial Immune Systems
  • Editor of the ACM SIGEVO newsletter

 

Fellowships and Awards

  • Leverhulme Research Fellowship

 

Grant Reviewer

  • Grant reviewer: Carnegie Trust
  • Grant reviewer: Leverhulme Trust
  • Re-elected to EPSRC peer review college

 

Invited Speaker

  • Invited Talk: University of St Andrews (Computer Science)
  • Invited Talk: Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico
  • Invited Seminar: University of Aberystwyth: Seminar, Life Long Learning in Optimisation
  • AHDB Smart Agriculture Conference (Invited Speaker)
  • University of Stirling: Research Seminar
  • University of Nottingham Research Seminar
  • Inivited Talk: Mathematical Modelling of Wind Risk, Arcachon, France. Optimisation for Forestry
  • Keynote: 15th UK Conference on Computational Intelligence (UKCI 
2015
  • Invited Speaker: Women@GECCO workshop, GECCO 2015
  • Keynote Speaker at 28th European Conference on Operational Research in Poznan in July 2016

 

Media Activity

  • FOCAS project featured in EU FET newsletter
  • The PerAda project hosted a public debate "Emotion as Interface" at Edinburgh International Science Festival, chaired by Emma Hart, with panel guests Prof Kevin Warwick, Prof Nikola Serbedzija, ad Dr Jenny Tillotson

 

Research Degree External Examining

  • PhD Examiner: University of Cardiff (School of Mathematics)
  • Phd External Examiner Queen Mary University
  • PhD Examiner: Robert Gordon University
  • PhD Examiner University of Edinburgh
  • PhD Examiner: University of York
  • PhD Examiner: University of Hong Kong
  • PhD Examiner: University of Aberytwyth
  • PhD Examiner: Manchester Metropolitan
  • PhD examiner, University of Pretoria, South Africa
  • PhD Examiner University of Kent Canterbury
  • PhD Examiner University of YorK (Computer Science)
  • PhD Examiner: Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
  • PhD at the University of Cardiff, in the School of Computer Science and Informatics
  • PhD examiner at the University of York
  • PhD examiner, University of Nottingham
  • PhD external examiner at Hong Kong Polytechnic University

 

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161 results

Comparing encodings for performance and phenotypic exploration in evolving modular robots

Conference Proceeding
Veenstra, F., Hart, E., Buchanan, E., Li, W., De Carlo, M., & Eiben, A. E. (2019)
Comparing encodings for performance and phenotypic exploration in evolving modular robots. In GECCO '19: Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference Companion. , (127-128). https://doi.org/10.1145/3319619.3322054
To investigate how encodings influence evolving the morphology and control of modular robots, we compared three encodings: a direct encoding and two generative encodings---a c...

Algorithm selection using deep learning without feature extraction

Conference Proceeding
Alissa, M., Sim, K., & Hart, E. (2019)
Algorithm selection using deep learning without feature extraction. In GECCO '19: Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference Companion. , (198-206). https://doi.org/10.1145/3321707.3321845
We propose a novel technique for algorithm-selection which adopts a deep-learning approach, specifically a Recurrent-Neural Network with Long-Short-Term-Memory (RNN-LSTM). In ...

An Illumination Algorithm Approach to Solving the Micro-Depot Routing Problem

Conference Proceeding
Urquhart, N., Hoehl, S., & Hart, E. (2019)
An Illumination Algorithm Approach to Solving the Micro-Depot Routing Problem. In GECCO '19: Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference Companion. , (1347-1355). https://doi.org/10.1145/3321707.3321767
An increasing emphasis on reducing pollution and congestion in city centres combined with an increase in online shopping is changing the ways in which logistics companies addr...

Evolving robust policies for community energy system management

Conference Proceeding
Cardoso, R., Hart, E., & Pitt, J. (2019)
Evolving robust policies for community energy system management. In GECCO '19: Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference Companion. , (1120-1128). https://doi.org/10.1145/3321707.3321763
Community energy systems (CESs) are shared energy systems in which multiple communities generate and consume energy from renewable resources. At regular time intervals, each p...

Quantifying the effects of increasing user choice in MAP-Elites applied to a Workforce Scheduling and Routing Problem.

Conference Proceeding
Urquhart, N., Hart, E., & Hutcheson, W. (2019)
Quantifying the effects of increasing user choice in MAP-Elites applied to a Workforce Scheduling and Routing Problem. In EvoApplications 2019: Applications of Evolutionary Computation, 49-63. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16692-2_4
Quality-diversity algorithms such as MAP-Elites provide a means of supporting the users when finding and choosing solutions to a problem by returning a set of solutions which ...

Use of machine learning techniques to model wind damage to forests

Journal Article
Hart, E., Sim, K., Kamimura, K., Meredieu, C., Guyon, D., & Gardiner, B. (2019)
Use of machine learning techniques to model wind damage to forests. Agricultural and forest meteorology, 265, 16-29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2018.10.022
This paper tested the ability of machine learning techniques, namely artificial neural networks and random forests, to predict the individual trees within a forest most at r...

Engineering Sustainable and Adaptive Systems in Dynamic and Unpredictable Environments

Conference Proceeding
Cardoso, R. P., Rossetti, R. J. F., Hart, E., Kurka, D. B., & Pitt, J. (2018)
Engineering Sustainable and Adaptive Systems in Dynamic and Unpredictable Environments. In T. Margaria, & B. Steffen (Eds.), Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation. Distributed Systems, 221-240. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03424-5_15
Electronic institutions are socially-inspired multi-agent systems, typically operating under a set of policies, which are required to determine system operation and to deal wi...

Selection methods and diversity preservation in many-objective evolutionary algorithms

Journal Article
Martí, L., Segredo, E., Sánchez-Pi, N., & Hart, E. (2018)
Selection methods and diversity preservation in many-objective evolutionary algorithms. Data Technologies and Applications, https://doi.org/10.1108/dta-01-2018-0009
Purpose – One of the main components of multi-objective, and therefore, many-objective evolutionary algorithms is the selection mechanism. It is responsible for performing two...

Optimisation and Illumination of a Real-world Workforce Scheduling and Routing Application via Map-Elites

Conference Proceeding
Urquhart, N., & Hart, E. (2018)
Optimisation and Illumination of a Real-world Workforce Scheduling and Routing Application via Map-Elites. In Parallel Problem Solving from Nature – PPSN XV 15th International Conference, Coimbra, Portugal, September 8–12, 2018, Proceedings, Part Ihttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99253-2_39
Workforce Scheduling and Routing Problems (WSRP) are very common in many practical domains, and usually have a number of objectives. Illumination algorithms such as Map-Elites...

On the Synthesis of Perturbative Heuristics for Multiple Combinatorial Optimisation Domains

Conference Proceeding
Stone, C., Hart, E., & Paechter, B. (2018)
On the Synthesis of Perturbative Heuristics for Multiple Combinatorial Optimisation Domains. In Parallel Problem Solving from Nature – PPSN XV 15th International Conference, Coimbra, Portugal, September 8–12, 2018, Proceedings, Part Ihttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99253-2_14
Hyper-heuristic frameworks, although intended to be cross-domain at the highest level, rely on a set of domain-specific low-level heuristics at lower levels. For some domains,...

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