Kenneth Alan De Jong (born 1944) is an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

and

professor emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". ...

George Mason University George Mason University (GMU) is a Public university, public research university in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. Located in Northern Virginia near Washington, D.C., the university is named in honor of George Mason, a Founding Father ...

. He is one of the pioneers in

evolutionary computation Evolutionary computation from computer science 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 ...

Education and career

De Jong was a student of

John Henry Holland John Henry Holland (February 2, 1929 – August 9, 2015) was an American scientist and professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan. He was a pioneer in what became known as genetic algorithms. Biograph ...

at the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

, where he completed a Ph.D. in 1975 with a dissertation on

genetic algorithm In computer science and operations research, a genetic algorithm (GA) is a metaheuristic inspired by the process of natural selection that belongs to the larger class of evolutionary algorithms (EA). Genetic algorithms are commonly used to g ...

s. He became a faculty member at George Mason University in 1984. He is the author of the textbook ''Evolutionary Computation: A Unified Approach'' (MIT Press, 2006), and was the founding editor-in-chief of the journal ''

Evolutionary Computation Evolutionary computation from computer science 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 ...

'', which published its first volume in 1993.

Recognition

De Jong was the 2005 recipient of the Evolutionary Computation Pioneer Award of the

IEEE Computational Intelligence Society The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office ...

. He is also the recipient of a lifetime achievement award of the Evolutionary Programming Society. He was a distinguished speaker of the

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 ...

in 2014.

References

External links

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