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

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 ...

based at

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

. Peter J. Bentley is an honorary professor and teaching fellow at UCL, a visiting professor at

Autodesk Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that provides software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquarte ...

and a collaborating professor at

KAIST KAIST (originally the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) is a national university, national research university located in Daedeok Innopolis, Daejeon, South Korea. KAIST was established by the Korean government in 1971 as the ...

. He is also a

popular science Popular science (also called pop-science or popsci) is an interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is more broad ranging. It may be written ...

author and consultant. He was a contributing editor for

WIRED Wired may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ''Wired'' (Jeff Beck album), 1976 * ''Wired'' (Hugh Cornwell album), 1993 * ''Wired'' (Mallory Knox album), 2017 * "Wired", a song by Prism from their album '' Beat Street'' * "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 ''BBC Science Focus'' (previously ''BBC Focus'') is a British monthly magazine about science and technology published in Bristol, UK by Immediate Media Company. Edited by Daniel Bennett, it covers all aspects of science and technology and is writ ...

'' magazine. Born in

Colchester Colchester ( ) is a city in northeastern Essex, England. It is the second-largest settlement in the county, with a population of 130,245 at the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 Census. The demonym is ''Colcestrian''. Colchester occupies the ...

, England, he achieved a BSc in

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

from the

University of Essex The University of Essex is a public university, public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, it is one of the original plate glass university, plate glass universities. The university comprises three camp ...

(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 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 ...

for

generative design Generative design is an iterative design process that uses software to generate outputs that fulfill a set of constraints iteratively adjusted by a designer. Whether a human, test program, or artificial intelligence, the designer algorith ...

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

. His research focuses on

artificial life Artificial life (ALife or A-Life) is a field of study wherein researchers examine systems related to natural life, its processes, and its evolution, through the use of simulations with computer models, robotics, and biochemistry. The discipline ...

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 198 ...

artificial immune systems Artificial immune systems (AIS) are a class of rule-based machine learning systems inspired by the principles and processes of the vertebrate immune system. The algorithms are typically modeled after the immune system's characteristics of learning ...

artificial neural networks In machine learning, a neural network (also artificial neural network or neural net, abbreviated ANN or NN) is a computational model inspired by the structure and functions of biological neural networks. A neural network consists of connected ...

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, b ...

, 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 at the

Natural History Museum A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history scientific collection, collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, Fungus, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleo ...

in July 2007 with

Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biology, evolutionary biologist, zoologist, science communicator and author. He is an Oxford fellow, emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was Simonyi Professor for the Publ ...

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 guitar ...

Lewis Wolpert Lewis Wolpert (19 October 1929 – 28 January 2021) was a South African-born British developmental biologist, author, and broadcaster. Wolpert popularized his French flag model of embryonic development, using the colours of the French flag ...

. His research has been described in several articles of

New Scientist ''New Scientist'' is a popular science 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 organ ...

. 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 intr ...

based on evolution, developmental and self-assembling systems. He received extensive publicity for his

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

application iStethoscope, which was developed in collaboration with

cardiologists Cardiology () is the study of the heart. Cardiology is a branch of medicine that deals with disorders of the heart and the cardiovascular system. The field includes medical diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart defects, coronary artery di ...

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 (: diagnoses) is the identification of the nature and cause of a certain phenomenon. Diagnosis is used in a lot of different disciplines, with variations in the use of logic, analytics, and experience, to determine " cause and effect". ...

heart disease Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is any disease involving the heart or blood vessels. CVDs constitute a class of diseases that includes: coronary artery diseases (e.g. angina pectoris, angina, myocardial infarction, heart attack), heart failure, ...

automatically using

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

. 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. Through his work as advisor for thesqua.re marketplace he helped create the sustainability measure EcoGrade. His notable PhD students include Siavash Haroun Mahdavi, who founded Within Technologies formerly Complex Matters, acquired by

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

* ''Artificial Intelligence in Byte-sized Chunks'', * ''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 British artificial intelligence researchers British computer scientists English computer scientists Academics of University College London Living people British science communicators

Popular books

Academic books

Academic proceedings

See also

References

External links