Natural Selection, Inc.

January 4, 2005

Natural Selection, Inc. Presents Poster at 2005 NSF Conference

Scottsdale, AZ – Dr. David Fogel, Chief Executive Officer of Natural Selection, Inc., offered a poster presentation of the company's achievements on its National Science Foundation SBIR Phase II Grant at the 2005 NSF Design, Service and Manufacturing Grantees and Research Conference today. The conference is being held at the Hyatt Regency Scottsdale at Gainy Ranch in Scottsdale, Arizona. The poster is titled "Evolving Object Neural Networks" and describes Natural Selection, Inc.'s ongoing research and development efforts to commercialize machine learning for entertainment software. "We're at the midpoint of our two-year grant and we're already constructing the framework for our software developer's kit and demonstrating that the evolutionary neural network approach can facilitate autonomous machine learning in complex games, such as chess," said Dr. Fogel. Natural Selection, Inc.'s most recent results demonstrate that an evolutionary computer program can learn to play chess at a level competitive with grandmasters. These results will be published in the upcoming 2005 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Games, April 4-6, in Essex, U.K.

"Our goal is to help publishers accelerate their development of games and employ artificially intelligent characters that capture the player's imagination. Our technology allows computer characters to learn a player's tactics and style and present continually novel behaviors in response. Our technology will also lead to more rapid testing and optimization of massively multiplayer games," said Dr. Fogel. Natural Selection, Inc.'s sister-company, Digenetics, Inc., led by its CEO, Doug Johnson, has already incorporated the results of the evolutionary neural network technology developed in the Phase II grant into its beta-version of Chess with an Attitude!, which can be found at www.digenetics.com.

"We're encouraged about the potential for obtaining additional investment to further our research and development and qualify for NSF's Phase IIb grant. The software tools we are developing can also assist in defense-related combat simulations for training, mission planning, and resource requirements," added Dr. Fogel. The National Science Foundation's SBIR program offers a continuation of Phase II grants when outside investment capital is acquired and will match funds at 50%, up to $250,000 for a $500,000 investment.

Natural Selection, Inc. was founded in 1993 to address complex problems in industry, medicine, and defense. The company possesses unique expertise in computational intelligence techniques, including evolutionary computation, neural networks, and fuzzy logic. The corporation's research efforts support the discovery of new pharmaceuticals, the automated detection and discovery of important patterns and processes in bioinformatics and medical informatics, computer-assisted diagnosis, and a variety of military and industrial projects.

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@natural-selection.com

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