Dr Seth Bullock

After gaining a BA in cognitive science and a DPhil (PhD) in evolutionary simulation modelling from the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences at Sussex University (supervised by Dave Cliff and Phil Husbands), I spent two years in Berlin at the Max Planck Institue for Human Development working with Peter Todd on simulating the evolution of adaptive decision-making behaviour in people and other animals. In 1999 I took up a five-year University Research Fellowship at the University of Leeds and became a Lecturer there in 2004. In October 2005 I joined the University of Southampton as Senior Lecturer, and helped to found the Science and Engineering of Natural Systems (SENSe) research group.  In 2009 I became head of the SENSe group, and also became Director of Southampton's new Institute for Complex Systems Simulation (ICSS).

Fully-Funded PhD Positions in Complex Systems Simulation

If you are interested in a fully-funded PhD position, modelling complex systems in areas such as climate change, drug design, evolutionary and ecological biology, transport, markets, amorphous and pervasive computing, tissues and biomedical systems, massive multi-agent systems, quantum systems, turbulence, nanodevices, molecular biology, industrial design, etc., please click here.

Research Interests

My principal research interest is evolutionary simulation modelling: the application of evolutionary modelling techniques developed within artificial intelligence (e.g., genetic algorithms) to problems within evolutionary biology (e.g., the evolution of communication).  I am also interested in self-organisation and adaptation in engineered systems, such as computational ecosystems, and the potential for the modelling techniques that I use to be applied to problems from many other disciplines, e.g., linguistics, economics, psychology, geography, anthropology, etc.

Some of my additional research interests include:

• modelling tools related to the evolutionary simulation modelling approach such as evolutionary computation, evolutionary and economic game theory, artificial neural networks, and evolutionary theory

• philosophical and methodological issues raised by evolutionary simulation modelling - philosophy of science and philosophy of biology

• engineering applications of evolutionary computation such as evolutionary and coevolutionary design paradigms

• areas of evolutionary biology, such as the handicap principle and signalling, sexual selection, and coevolution

• psychological topics, such as the evolution of cognition and decision-making, rationality, and experimental economics

• research areas sometimes termed: the simulation of adaptive behaviour, evolutionary robotics, complex systems theory, individual-based models, synthetic psychology, biology and behavioural ecology

Location

• Highfield Campus, Building 16, Room 1053

• I am a member of the EPSRC College.

• I serve on the board of directors of the International Society for Artificial Life

• I am associate editor of Adaptive Behavior.

• I was Conference Chair for the Eleventh International Conference on Artificial Life, hosted in Winchester, August 2008.

• I am co-editor of a special issue of Artificial Life on the theme of Visualization for Complex Adaptive Systems.

• I am editor of a forthcoming special issue of Complexity on the theme of Spatial Organisation.

• I have carried out consultancy for the Department of Trade and Industry.

• I have served as external examiner for the award of PhD, and am external examiner for the MSc Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems at the University of Sussex.