Profile
Biography
My research career started with 6 years as a research associate in the Dept of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh (1990—1996). Initially I was working on an AI in Design project, and then moved on to evolutionary computation for logistics; this was the project that led directly to the current highly successful and commonly used ‘hyper-heuristics’ techniques. I entered the academic ladder with a lectureship at Reading in 1997, and there developed interests and high-impact contributions in multi-objective optimization, bioinformatics, telecommunications and web science, and at the same time began to work with industry (BT, and several SMEs); I became Reader in 2002, took up a Chair in Computer Science at Exeter in 2003 (where I also developed links with Motorola and BAE Systems), and moved to Heriot-Watt at the end of 2007, where I continue to combine fundamental research with knowledge exchange at various levels.