Dr Peter John Bentley (born 16 May 1972) is a British author and

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

based at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

. Peter J. Bentley is an Honorary Professor and Teaching Fellow at UCL, a Visiting Professor at Autodesk and a Collaborating Professor at KAIST. He is also a

popular science ''Popular Science'' (also known as ''PopSci'') is an American digital magazine carrying popular science content, which refers to articles for the general reader on science and technology subjects. ''Popular Science'' has won over 58 awards, incl ...

author and consultant. He was a contributing editor for WIRED UK and was the monthly host of the

Royal Institution The Royal Institution of Great Britain (often the Royal Institution, Ri or RI) is an organisation for scientific education and research, based in the City of Westminster. It was founded in 1799 by the leading British scientists of the age, inc ...

's café scientifique. He currently writes for BBC Science Focus magazine. Born in

Colchester Colchester ( ) is a city in Essex, in the East of England. It had a population of 122,000 in 2011. The demonym is Colcestrian. Colchester occupies the site of Camulodunum, the first major city in Roman Britain and its first capital. Colches ...

, England, he achieved a BSc in

Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

from the University of Essex (supervised by Edward Tsang) and a PhD in Evolutionary Design (supervised by Jonathan Wakefield) at the age of 24. His doctorate thesis was entitled ''Generic Evolutionary Design of Solid Objects using a Genetic Algorithm'' and pioneered the use of

evolutionary computation In computer science, evolutionary computation is a family of algorithms for global optimization inspired by biological evolution, and the subfield of artificial intelligence and soft computing studying these algorithms. In technical terms, they ...

for

generative design Generative design is an iterative design process that involves a program that will generate a certain number of outputs that meet certain constraints, and a designer that will fine tune the feasible region by selecting specific output or chang ...

. Since 1997 has been head of the Digital Biology Interest Group at the Department of Computer Science,

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

. His research focuses on

, artificial life,

swarm intelligence Swarm intelligence (SI) is the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial. The concept is employed in work on artificial intelligence. The expression was introduced by Gerardo Beni and Jing Wang in 1989, in ...

artificial immune systems In artificial intelligence, artificial immune systems (AIS) are a class of computationally intelligent, rule-based machine learning systems inspired by the principles and processes of the vertebrate immune system. The algorithms are typically modele ...

artificial neural networks Artificial neural networks (ANNs), usually simply called neural networks (NNs) or neural nets, are computing systems inspired by the biological neural networks that constitute animal brains. An ANN is based on a collection of connected unit ...

and other types of

biologically inspired computing Bio-inspired computing, short for biologically inspired computing, is a field of study which seeks to solve computer science problems using models of biology. It relates to connectionism, social behavior, and emergence. Within computer science, ...

, which he terms ''Digital Biology.'' He participates in science festivals and public events, for example he organised and chaired the debate on Complexity and Evolution held as part of the

Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) is the premier conference in the area of genetic and evolutionary computation. GECCO has been held every year since 1999, when it was first established as a recombination of the Internat ...

at the Natural History Museum in July 2007 with

Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. An ath ...

Steve Jones Steve or Steven Jones may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Steve Jones (English presenter) (born 1945), English musician, disk jockey, television presenter, and voice-over artist *Steve Jones (musician) (born 1955), English rock and roll guita ...

Lewis Wolpert Lewis Wolpert (19 October 1929 – 28 January 2021) was a South African-born British developmental biologist, author, and broadcaster. Wolpert was best known for his French flag model of embryonic development, where he used the French flag a ...

. His research has been described in several articles of

New Scientist ''New Scientist'' is a magazine covering all aspects of science and technology. Based in London, it publishes weekly English-language editions in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. An editorially separate organisation publishe ...

. His recent research focuses on morphological computation and novel architectures designed for

natural computation Natural computing,G.Rozenberg, T.Back, J.Kok, Editors, Handbook of Natural Computing, Springer Verlag, 2012A.Brabazon, M.O'Neill, S.McGarraghyNatural Computing Algorithms Springer Verlag, 2015 also called natural computation, is a terminology intro ...

based on evolution, developmental and self-assembling systems. He received extensive publicity for his iPhone application iStethoscope, which was developed in collaboration with cardiologists in USA. The app has been used to gather

heart sounds Heart sounds are the noises generated by the beating heart and the resultant flow of blood through it. Specifically, the sounds reflect the turbulence created when the heart valves snap shut. In cardiac auscultation, an examiner may use a stetho ...

from people around the world in a research project to enable computers to

diagnose Diagnosis is the identification of the nature and cause of a certain phenomenon. Diagnosis is used in many different disciplines, with variations in the use of logic, analytics, and experience, to determine " cause and effect". In systems enginee ...

heart disease Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a class of diseases that involve the heart or blood vessels. CVD includes coronary artery diseases (CAD) such as angina and myocardial infarction (commonly known as a heart attack). Other CVDs include stroke, hea ...

automatically using

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

. He cofounded the online marketplace Kazoova Ltd which specialises in quirky and unusual activities and was Chief Technology Officer of AI company Braintree Ltd from 2016 to 2019. His notable PhD students include Siavash Haroun Mahdavi, who founded Within Technologies formerly Complex Matters, acquired by Autodesk in 2014, with generative design subsequently incorporated into several Autodesk products. Bentley became a Visiting Professor at Autodesk Research in 2020. His books include the critically acclaimed ‘’Digital Biology’’, ‘’Undercover Scientist’’ and ‘’Digitized’’.

Popular books

* ''10 Short Lessons in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics'', * ''Digitized: The science of computers and how it shapes our world'', * ''The Undercover Scientist: Investigating the Mishaps of Everyday Life'', * ''Why Sh*t Happens: The Science of a Really Bad Day'', (US version of The ''Undercover Scientist'') * ''The Invention of Numbers. From Zeroes to Heroes: The secrets of numbers and how they created our world'', (Revised paperback edition of ''The Book of Numbers'') * ''The Book of Numbers: The Secret of Numbers and How They Changed the World'', * ''Digital Biology. How nature is transforming our technology and our lives'',

Academic books

* ''Evolutionary Design by Computers'', * ''Creative Evolutionary Systems'', * ''On Growth, Form and Computers'', * ''The PhD Application Handbook'',

Academic proceedings

* ''Artificial Immune Systems. Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference (ICARIS 2008)'', * ''Advances in Artificial Life. Proceedings of the Eighth European Conference (ECAL 2005)'', * ''Artificial Immune Systems. Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference (ICARIS 2005)'', * ''Artificial Immune Systems. Proceedings of the Third International Conference (ICARIS 2004)'', * ''Evolvability, Genetics & Development in Natural and Constructed Systems: Abstracts of the EPSRC Evolvability Network Symposium'', August 2003 * ''Artificial Immune Systems. Proceedings of the Second International Conference (ICARIS 2003)'', * ''Artificial Immune Systems. Proceedings of the First International Conference (ICARIS)'', * ''Proceedings of the AISB99 Symposium on Creative Evolutionary Systems'', * ''AID 1998 1st Workshop Notes on Evolutionary Design'', July 1998

References

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External links

Peter Bentley's home page at UCL

Peter Bentley's book page

Peter Bentley's book blog

BBC Radio 4 documentary ''Natural Technology'' broadcast May 2001 featuring Peter Bentley

Interview with Peter Bentley

Curtis Brown author details for Peter Bentley
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bentley, Peter 1972 births Artificial intelligence researchers British computer scientists English computer scientists Academics of University College London Living people Science communicators

Popular books

Academic books

Academic proceedings

See also

References

External links