Larry S. Yaeger
Professor of Informatics
Contact Information
larryy [at] indiana.edu
(812) 856-1845
Informatics East, Room 305
Website
Office hours: Regular office hours will be announced in class. Or consult my work calendar, select an available time in the afternoon, and contact me by email.
Other Titles
- Core Faculty, Cognitive Science Program
- Affiliate, Biocomplexity Institute
Education
- M.S. in Aerospace Engineering at Polytechnic Institute of New York, 1974
- B.S. in Aerospace Engineering at Purdue University, 1972
Courses
- I210 Information Infrastructure I (Homepage)
- I486/I586/H400 Artificial Life as an approach to Artificial Intelligence (Homepage)
Biography
Prof. Yaeger has used computers to solve a wide variety of problems throughout his career. Having studied aerospace engineering, with a focus on computers, he carried out pioneering computational fluid dynamic flow studies over the space shuttle and submarines.
As director of software development at Digital Productions, he used a Cray X-MP supercomputer to generate the first photo-realistic computer graphics in a feature film, The Last Starfighter, as well as providing CGI effects for 2010, Labyrinth, and a number of Clio Award-winning television commercials.
While with Alan Kay's Vivarium program at Apple Computer, he designed and programmed a computer "voice" for Koko the gorilla, helped introduce Macintoshes into routine production on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and created a widely respected Artificial Life computational ecology ("Polyworld") that evolves neural architectures resulting from the mutation and cross-over of genetic codes, via behavior-based, sexual reproduction of artificial organisms. He also co-authored possibly the first book + CD-ROM title, the multiple award-winning Visualization of Natural Phenomena.
As part of Apple's Advanced Technology Group, he was technical lead in the development of the neural network-based hand-print recognition system in second generation Newton PDAs and Mac OS X's Inkwell. For eight years before joining Indiana University he telecommuted for Apple from scenic Beanblossom, Indiana, where he continues to reside (despite the fact that his commute got a lot longer as a result of taking a local job).
Since joining IU he has taught classes on "Artificial Life as an approach to Artificial Intelligence", ported Polyworld to modern personal computers, and released it as open source on SourceForge. He has also collaborated with faculty and students to extend Polyworld, demonstrating positive evolutionary trends in an information-theoretic measure of the complexity of neural structure and function, and near-optimal, ideal free distributions of Polyworld agents to heterogeneous resources. With faculty at IU and elsewhere he co-organized the Artificial Life X conference held here at IU June 3-7, 2006.
He also enjoys teaching the Informatics Introduction to Programming course, I210.
Research Areas
- Artificial Intelligence
- Artificial Life
- Cognitive Science
- Complex Networks and Systems
- Computer Graphics
- Ecosystem Simulation
- Evolution
- Genetic Algorithms
- Handwriting Recognition
- Information Theory
- Neural Networks
