Natural Selection, Inc.^Ò Supports 2001 Congress on Evolutionary Computation

Seoul, Korea -- Dr. Gary Fogel, senior staff scientist of Natural Selection, Inc.^Ò, and Dr. David Fogel, chief executive officer of Natural Selection, Inc. ^Ò, completed four days of efforts supporting the 2001 Congress on Evolutionary Computation, held May 27-30, 2001 at the COEX Center in Seoul, Korea. Gary Fogel served as co-technical chairman and presented multiple lectures at the meeting. David Fogel provided an introductory tutorial on evolutionary computation, a keynote lecture honoring the late Professor Michael Conrad, and co-chaired a special session on theory and foundations of evolutionary computation. "This was a very successful event," said David Fogel. "There were over 170 presented papers with a diverse international representation and a very high level of technical content." The 2001 Congress on Evolutionary Computation was co-sponsored by the IEEE Neural Networks Council, the IEE, and the Evolutionary Programming Society. Of particular interest at the congress was a series of competitions, which included a $200 challenge series of checkers games between Natural Selection, Inc.'s self-taught "Blondie24" program and participants of the congress. Last year, at the 2000 Congress on Evolutionary Computation held in San Diego, CA, 26 participants played against the program for $100, but none was able to defeat it in eight-minute timed games. This year, 11 more participants tried to defeat the program, developed by David Fogel and Kumar Chellapilla (senior staff scientist), but again none was successful. "Maybe we'll need to increase the prize again to $300," said David.

For more information, please contact:

Dr. David B. Fogel,
Chief Executive Officer,
Natural Selection, Inc.,
3333 N. Torrey Pines Ct.,
Suite 200,
La Jolla, CA, 92037
tel: (858) 455-6449
fax: (858) 455-1560
dfogel [at] natural-selection.com

and please visit our web site at http://www.natural-selection.com/.