CNS/Ph 175: Artificial Life

This is the main page for CNS/Ph 175, a course on theory of and experiments with artificial living systems, jointly offered by the Computation & Neural Systems Program and the Physics Department at the California Institute of Technology

Catalog Description:

CNS/Ph 175: Artificial Life 9 units (3-0-6); first term. Prerequisites: Ph 2 or equivalent; programming skills. Introduction to the study of simple living systems using the paradigm of self- replicating code evolving in a noisy environment replete with information, implemented on a computer. Applications to the evolution of complexity, adaptive computation, self-organized criticality, thermodynamical and statistical theories of evolution, population biology, and the "directed" mutation hypothesis.

Instructor: Dr. Chris Adami
TAs: Charles Ofria
Evan Dorn

First Term: TuTh 10:30-Noon, 103 Downs

Table of Contents

• Course Introduction
• Lecture Topics
• Lecture Schedule
• Handouts & Homework
• Intro to ALife CD
• Related Resources (from the Santa Fe Institute)

• caltech.class.cns175
• The Avida Technical Manual

Other Links:

• Karl Sims Virtual Creatures

Page maintained by Charles Ofria
Send all comments to charles@krl.caltech.edu