Current Research

Evolutionary Games; Social and Cultural Evolution, Modeling, and Simulation

Currently I am working on a number of projects intersecting computer science and social science. This work centers around modeling human behavior, decision making, social norms, culture and their evolution using multi-agent systems and through the framework of evolutionary game theory. Other projects involve problems relating to the dynamics of cultural/social information in structured populations (e.g. social networks) and how to appropriately model and play against human opponents in games.

Past Research

Computer Music and Computational Aesthetics

Prior to coming to UMD, I worked on several projects relating to computer music, music information retrieval, and computational aesthetics with Bill Manaris. This research focuses around applications of machine learning techniques to music and aesthetics:

A National Science Foundation (NSF) project on music information retrieval. This work involves the development of a music-search engine prototype to search music libraries based on aesthetic similarity.

A genetic programming music generation system called NEvMusE (Neuro-Evolutionary Music Environment). We conducted several experiments using trained Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) as fitness critics, i.e. Artificial Art Critics, during the evolutionary music composition process. The ANNs trained on statistical proportions of musical pieces. Samples of evolved music pieces can be found here: NEvMuse

Publications