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

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

. 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, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...

. 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 Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

for her graduate studies, where she joined the

University of Sussex The University of Sussex is a public university, public research university, research university located in Falmer, East Sussex, England. It lies mostly within the city boundaries of Brighton and Hove. Its large campus site is surrounded by the ...

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 city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

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 French Institute for Research in Comp ...

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

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public research university in Nottingham, England. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. Nottingham's main campus (University Park Campus, Nottingh ...

. 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 cover ...

, 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 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 ''IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. It covers evolutionary computation and related areas including nature-inspired algorithms, p ...

, 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 membe ...

(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 to uniquely identify a periodical publication (periodical), such as a magazine. The ISSN is especially helpful in distinguishing between serials with the same title. ISSNs a ...

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 Academic staff of Simón Bolívar University (Venezuela) Academics of the University of Stirling British women computer scientists Venezuelan women educators