Charles Ofria

Charles Ofria is a researcher at the University of Michigan. His research interest span across three different areas, all related to Artificial Life.

Professor Ofria and his research group are extremely interested in the way complex organisms are formed from single organisms. They have tackled this problem in multiple directions, including, but not limited to, exploring the processes that promote complexity, tracking the flow of information into the genomes and setting up different architectures with the genetic material of the individuals. The way they face this research questions, is by using computational (digital) organisms, in which controlling the different characteristics is extremely easier compared to the real world. The most renowned paper in the matter is [1], in which Professor Ofria analyzes the basic formation of complex beings in a digital environment.

This second area is extremely related to the first one, but it is more focused on the milestones throughout evolution that made possible the existence of complex beings. On this area, several changes are introduced to the digital organisms, in order to understand the specific factors that determined certain characteristics of individuals.

In this area, two different purposes are leveraged: On one side, Professor Ofria's experiments would allow for new insights on the way intelligence has evolved throughout the epochs, but at the same time, this knowledge can be used to build complex artificial systems, that based on this principles, can build more complex behavior that will ultimately help solve problems that have not been solved before.

Professor Ofria's multiple research interests, all fall down to one common thing. Taking organisms that are computationally created, and make them behave in certain ways observing the outcomes of such behavior. In order to accomplish this, there should be a very strong claim that the digital organisms would behave just like any other living organism would behave. This is where the simulation software comes in. Professor Ofria's has been working on Avida[2] for more than 10 years.

Avida is a computational platform that allows digital (computerized) organisms simulate evolution in a controlled environment. The claim that evolution would happen in a virtual environment is support by the fact that, to quote Daniel Dennett, “…evolution will occur whenever and wherever three conditions are met: replication, variation (mutation), and differential fitness (competition)” [3]. The Avida platform is broken up into 3 modules: Avida Core, GUI and analysis and statistics tools.

• www.ofria.com
• http://avida-ed.msu.edu/

1. Lenski, R. E., Ofria, C., Pennock, R. T., & Adami, C. (2003). The evolutionary origin of complex features. Nature, 423(6936), 139-144.
2. Ofria C and Wilke CO (2004) Avida: A Software Platform for Research in Computational Evolutionary Biology, Journal of Artificial Life, 10:191-229.
3. Dennett, D. (2002). The new replicators. In M. Pagel (Ed.), Encyclopedia of evolution (pp.E83–E92). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.