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
  • Appointed to the UK Operational Research Society Research Panel
  • Elected to the Executive Board of the ACM Special Interest Group SIGEVO
  • Invited to join the IEEE CIS Evolutionary Computation Technical Committee for 2012
  • Member of Royal Society delegation of UK scientists in UK-Russia Frontiers of Science Symposium (Kazan)

 

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)
  • Program Chair of the ninth IEEE International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self- Organizing Systems (2015)
  • 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 co-chair: Steering Complex Adaptive Systems, ECAL 2015: 12th International Conference on Artificial Life
  • 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

 

Editorial Activity

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

 

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

 

Media Activity

  • 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
  • FOCAS project featured in EU FET newsletter

 

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 Aberytwyth
  • PhD Examiner: University of Hong Kong
  • 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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Date


161 results

Sample and time efficient policy learning with CMA-ES and Bayesian Optimisation

Conference Proceeding
Le Goff, L. K., Buchanan, E., Hart, E., Eiben, A. E., Li, W., De Carlo, M., …Tyrrell, A. M. (2020)
Sample and time efficient policy learning with CMA-ES and Bayesian Optimisation. In ALIFE 2020: The 2020 Conference on Artificial Life. , (432-440). https://doi.org/10.1162/isal_a_00299
In evolutionary robot systems where morphologies and controllers of real robots are simultaneously evolved, it is clear that there is likely to be requirements to refine the i...

On Pros and Cons of Evolving Topologies with Novelty Search

Conference Proceeding
Le Goff, L. K., Hart, E., Coninx, A., & Doncieux, S. (2020)
On Pros and Cons of Evolving Topologies with Novelty Search. In ALIFE 2020: The 2020 Conference on Artificial Life. , (423-431). https://doi.org/10.1162/isal_a_00291
Novelty search was proposed as a means of circumventing deception and providing selective pressure towards novel behaviours to provide a path towards open-ended evolution. Ini...

A Deep Learning Approach to Predicting Solutions in Streaming Optimisation Domains

Conference Proceeding
Alissa, M., Sim, K., & Hart, E. (2020)
A Deep Learning Approach to Predicting Solutions in Streaming Optimisation Domains. . https://doi.org/10.1145/3377930.3390224
In the field of combinatorial optimisation, per-instance algorithm selection still remains a challenging problem, particularly with respect to streaming problems such as packi...

From disorganized equality to efficient hierarchy: how group size drives the evolution of hierarchy in human societies

Journal Article
Perret, C., Hart, E., & Powers, S. T. (2020)
From disorganized equality to efficient hierarchy: how group size drives the evolution of hierarchy in human societies. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 287(1928), https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.0693
A manifest trend is that larger and more productive human groups shift from distributed to centralized decision-making. Voluntary theories propose that human groups shift to h...

Automatic Generation of Adversarial Metamorphic Malware Using MAP-Elites

Conference Proceeding
Babaagba, K. O., Tan, Z., & Hart, E. (2020)
Automatic Generation of Adversarial Metamorphic Malware Using MAP-Elites. In Applications of Evolutionary Computation. EvoApplications 2020. , (117-132). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43722-0_8
In the field of metamorphic malware detection, training a detection model with malware samples that reflect potential mutants of the malware is crucial in developing a model r...

Using MAP-Elites to support policy making around Workforce Scheduling and Routing

Journal Article
Urquhart, N., Hart, E., & Hutcheson, W. (2020)
Using MAP-Elites to support policy making around Workforce Scheduling and Routing. Automatisierungstechnik, 68(2), https://doi.org/10.1515/auto-2019-0107
English abstract: Algorithms such as MAP-Elites provide a means of allowing users to explore a solution space by returning an archive of high-performing solutions. Such an arc...

A similarity-based neighbourhood search for enhancing the balance exploration–exploitation of differential evolution

Journal Article
Segredo, E., Lalla-Ruiz, E., Hart, E., & Voß, S. (2020)
A similarity-based neighbourhood search for enhancing the balance exploration–exploitation of differential evolution. Computers and Operations Research, 117, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cor.2019.104871
The success of search-based optimisation algorithms depends on appropriately balancing exploration and exploitation mechanisms during the course of the search. We introduce a ...

Nowhere Metamorphic Malware Can Hide - A Biological Evolution Inspired Detection Scheme

Conference Proceeding
Babaagba, K. O., Tan, Z., & Hart, E. (2019)
Nowhere Metamorphic Malware Can Hide - A Biological Evolution Inspired Detection Scheme. In Dependability in Sensor, Cloud, and Big Data Systems and Applications. , (369-382). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1304-6_29
The ability to detect metamorphic malware has generated significant research interest over recent years, particularly given its proliferation on mobile devices. Such malware i...

Being a leader or being the leader: The evolution of institutionalised hierarchy

Conference Proceeding
Perret, C., Hart, E., & Powers, S. T. (2019)
Being a leader or being the leader: The evolution of institutionalised hierarchy. In ALIFE 2019: The 2019 Conference on Artificial Life, (171-178). https://doi.org/10.1162/isal_a_00158
Human social hierarchy has the unique characteristic of existing in two forms. Firstly, as an informal hierarchy where leaders and followers are implicitly defined by their pe...

The ARE Robot Fabricator: How to (Re)produce Robots that Can Evolve in the Real World

Conference Proceeding
Hale, M. F., Buchanan, E., Winfield, A. F., Timmis, J., Hart, E., Eiben, A. E., …Tyrrell, A. M. (2019)
The ARE Robot Fabricator: How to (Re)produce Robots that Can Evolve in the Real World. In ALIFE 2019: The 2019 Conference on Artificial Life, 95-102. https://doi.org/10.1162/isal_a_00147
The long term vision of the Autonomous Robot Evolution (ARE) project is to create an ecosystem of both virtual and physical robots with evolving brains and bodies. One of the ...

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