Gabriela Ochoa is a Venezuelan British computer scientist and Professor at the

University of Stirling The University of Stirling (, gd, Oilthigh Shruighlea (abbreviated as Stir or Shruiglea, in post-nominals) is a public university in Stirling, Scotland, founded by royal charter in 1967. It is located in the Central Belt of Scotland, built w ...

. Her research considers evolutionary algorithms and heuristic search methods.

Early life and education

Ochoa was born in

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

. Her grandfather was a doctor, and she became interested in science at an early age. She earned her bachelor's degree at the Simón Bolívar University, where she remained for her master's degree and worked as a teacher's assistant. She moved to the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

for her graduate studies, where she joined the

University of Sussex , mottoeng = Be Still and Know , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £14.4 million (2020) , budget = £319.6 million (2019–20) , chancellor = Sanjeev Bhaskar , vice_chancellor = Sasha Roseneil , ...

as a doctoral student. At Sussex Ochoa worked on genetic algorithms with Hilary Buxton and Inman Harvey. After graduating she returned to

, where she was made Associate Professor at the Simón Bolívar University.

Research and career

In 2006 Ochoa once again left

, and moved to

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

to join the

French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation The National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria) () is a French national research institution focusing on computer science and applied mathematics. It was created under the name ''Institut de recherche en informatiq ...

. She worked there for three months with Dr
Evelyne Lutton
before joining the

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public university, public research university in Nottingham, United Kingdom. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. The University of Nottingham belongs t ...

. By 2012, Ochoa had relocated to the

, where she was promoted to Full Professor. Her research considers evolutionary algorithms and heuristic search methods. She has worked on the computational design of medical treatments in an effort to minimise antibiotic resistance in Scotland. Supported by the

Leverhulme Trust The Leverhulme Trust () is a large national grant-making organisation in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1925 under the will of the 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925), with the instruction that its resources should be used to suppo ...

, Ochoa created the website ''Lon Maps'', a space which looks to establish visualisation techniques for computational search spaces. In 2020 Ochoa was awarded the

EvoStar EvoStar, or Evo*, is an international scientific event devoted to evolutionary computation held in Europe. Its structure has evolved over time and it currently comprises four conferences: EuroGP the annual conference on Genetic Programming, EvoA ...

Award for Outstanding Contribution to Evolutionary Computation in Europe.

Academic service

Ochoa has been associate editor and served on many editorial boards, including the IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, Evolutionary Computation journal and the journal of Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines. She is on the Executive Board of

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

(ACM) Special Interest Group on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (SIGEVO).

Selected publications

*Ochoa, Gabriela; Christie, Lee A.; Brownlee, Alexander E.; Hoyle, Andrew (2020
"Multi-objective evolutionary design of antibiotic treatments"
''Artificial Intelligence in Medicine''. 102: 101759. doibr>10.1016/j.artmed.2019.101759.

ISSN An International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) is an eight-digit serial number used to uniquely identify a serial publication, such as a magazine. The ISSN is especially helpful in distinguishing between serials with the same title. ISSNs ...

0933-3657 *Tinós, Renato; Whitley, Darrell; Ochoa, Gabriela (2020)
"A New Generalized Partition Crossover for the Traveling Salesman Problem: Tunneling between Local Optima"
''Evolutionary Computation''. 28 (2): 255–288. doibr>10.1162/evco_a_00254

1063-6560. *Ochoa, Gabriela; Veerapen, Nadarajen (2018).
Mapping the global structure of TSP fitness landscapes
. ''Journal of Heuristics''. 24 (3): 265–294. doibr>10.1007/s10732-017-9334-0

1572-9397. *Ochoa, Gabriela; Veerapen, Nadarajen (2016)
Deconstructing the Big Valley Search Space Hypothesis
. ''Evolutionary Computation in Combinatorial Optimization''. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Cham: Springer International Publishing: 58–73. doibr>10.1007/978-3-319-30698-8_5
. * * * * Ochoa, Gabriela; Tomassini, Marco; Vérel, Sebástien; Darabos, Christian (2008).
A study of NK landscapes' basins and local optima networks
. ''Proceedings of the 10th annual conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation''. GECCO '08. Atlanta, GA, USA: Association for Computing Machinery: 555–562. doibr>10.1145/1389095.1389204
. * Ochoa, Gabriela (2006).
Error Thresholds in Genetic Algorithms
. ''Evolutionary Computation''. 14 (2): 157–182. doibr>10.1162/evco.2006.14.2.157

1063-6560. * Ochoa, Gabriela (1998
"On Genetic Algorithms and Lindenmayer Systems
. ''Parallel Problem Solving from Nature — PPSN V''. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer: 335–344. doibr>10.1007/BFb0056876
.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ochoa, Gabriela Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Simón Bolívar University (Venezuela) alumni Simón Bolívar University (Venezuela) faculty Academics of the University of Stirling Women computer scientists Venezuelan women educators