Anya Vostinar
Carleton College, MN·Computer Science
Evolution is a powerful problem solver, and computer scientists borrow it. Evolutionary algorithms evolve candidate solutions to tasks such as robot navigation, medical data analysis and scientific instrument design.
- Fields
Computer Science
Ecology & Evolution
- Topics
evolutionary algorithms
evolutionary computation
symbiosis
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2027
What they work on
- Implement six forms of symbiosis, spanning the parasitism–mutualism spectrum and different types of benefit or harm, in a computational evolution platform and measure how each affects evolutionary problem solving.
- Test how the effects of symbiotic co-evolution change under three common environmental variations, to find which symbiosis–environment combinations work best.
- Develop and evaluate techniques that use symbiotic co-evolution to improve evolutionary search algorithms, and identify rules for when they are most effective.
- Model how symbiosis-based techniques could steer the evolution of microbial communities in laboratory directed-evolution experiments.
More about the research
Yet even advanced versions leave out a process thought to be key to complex life: co-evolution between species that live in close association, known as symbionts. These relationships range from parasitism, where one partner harms the other, to mutualism, where both benefit. This project asks whether symbiosis can make evolution, in computers and in the lab, a better problem solver.
Why it matters
Better evolutionary algorithms could improve computational tasks such as robot navigation, medical data analysis and instrument design. Rules for steering symbiotic microbes could inform new laboratory protocols for directed microbial evolution. That could aid applications such as breaking down environmental contaminants and producing biofuels.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Joseph Parker
California Institute of Technology, CA·Ecology & Evolution
Compare free-living and ant-associated rove beetles to trace how new cell types and biosynthetic pathways let beetles chemically defend against ants or manipulate ant behavior.
Randi Rotjan
Tufts University, MA·Ecology & Evolution
Measure how symbiotic state, from nearly algae-free white colonies to algae-rich brown ones, affects reproductive investment in the Northern Star Coral Astrangia poculata.
Oana Carja
Carnegie Mellon University, PA·Ecology & Evolution·Early-career
Model how heterogeneous spatial population structure shapes competition between beneficial mutations, the crossing of rugged fitness landscapes and genetic hitchhiking of neutral mutations, using new mathematical and computational frameworks.
The school
Carleton College: 4 labs on PI Pages, $5M a year on research.
Reach out
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