Bryson 2008 Undergrad Projects

Dr Joanna Bryson

jjb _AT_ cs.bath.ac.uk

From 2007-2009 I am on sabbatical at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (KLI). That's in Vienna, Austria. This means I do not have teaching responsibilities during this period, and I won't be on campus very much.

However, I am still willing to take a couple students if:

they are sufficiently keen and competent that both I and the DoS think they will be able to handle relatively little live, `hands-on' supervision, and
they choose a project directly relevant to the work I'm meant to be doing at the KLI.

I did not supervise any undergraduates in 2007-8, but I am supervising an MSc. We mostly talk by email & IM, but we have met in person twice so far (once in Bath, once he came to Birmingham.)

My sabbatical research concerns the biological evolution of cultural evolution. This mostly involves doing agent-based modelling projects, although other sorts of projects are possible. Examples of possible projects include:

Modelling the social structure of lemurs or spotted hyenas.
Modelling the fission/fusion society and inter-troop relations of chimpanzees or spider monkeys.
Modelling cultural variation in the use of anti-social punishment. See "Antisocial Punishment Across Societies" Science 319, 7 March 2008, 1362-1367 by Benedikt Herrmann, Christian Thöni and Simon Gächter. [abstract], [article], [supplementary materials], [commentary by Herb Gintis], [further information]. I'm collaborating with Dr. Herrmann, and this work might possibly lead to a graduate funding opportunity in 2009.

For previous projects that have been related to this work, see Christos Bechlivanidis, Avri Bilovich, and Ando Yasushi's dissertations on my previous dissertations page, and papers with Hagen Lehmann and Ivana Cace on my publications page.

It is slightly possible that I would take AI projects for improving the software I use for modelling (which is also used sometimes for computer games). See the AmonI software page for details. Even if improving a tool is the main thrust of your project, you should still have a science or game development project to conduct as well, since developers don't tend to really improve tools they aren't actively using themselves. See related papers on my designing intelligent systems page.

Interested students should email me in order to arrange an online chat. Since that's how you'll be supervised, that's how we'll do any pre-supervisory discussions, to see how it would work out.