Matt Oates

PhD Student
Department of Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences
University of Bristol
Mr Matt Oates
Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences,
Department of Engineering Mathematics,
Queen's Building, University Walk
Clifton, Bristol
BS8 1TR

http://www.mattoates.co.uk

Specialist Research Area
Evolutionary Swarm Robotics

I am currently undertaking a four year PhD as a postgraduate student with the Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences (BCCS), supervision is shared between the BRL and the UoB Computer Science department towards evolvability of decision making behaviour in robotic swarms. The first year (2009) and MRes portion of my postgraduate study with the BCCS involved investigating the evolution of Calcium cell signalling over evolution of all currently sequenced genomes. Hopefully what I have learned from cell signalling will aid in the design of swarm robotic systems. This is a real advantage of interdisciplinary institutions such as the BRL and BCCS.

Previously (2008) I have worked as a research assistant in the Centre for Catchment & Coastal Research part of the Institute for Geography and Earth Sciences at Aberystwyth. The most notable academic work throughout the year was the integration of a high-definition laser scanner with a rugged robotic chassis, designed to repeatedly scan large scale riverbeds. This year of work extended my undergraduate degree at Aberystwyth University doing a BSc in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (2003-2007). My degree concluded in a dissertation focused on implementing a symbiogenetic operator in a Genetic Algorithm to help preserve coupling between loci, and to try and speed up adoption of highly fit partial solutions in a non discriminatory way. During the middle of my undergrad degree I took time out for a year in "industry". I accepted a student programmer placement (2006) in the Remote Sensing Group at Plymouth Marine Laboratories, where I was responsible for the development of a batch data ordering/processing system for Antarctic satellite data. This work was funded as part of the Rothera ARIES Data Archive project.