Research Institutes

• Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre

My broad areas of interest are in artificial intelligence, evolutionary computation, global optimization, multiobjective optimization and computational biology.

A selected list of more fine-grained research topics are these:

• multiobjective evolutionary algorithms
• performance assessment of multiobjective optimizers
• No-free-lunch theorems in multiobjective optimization
• archiving algorithms (online) in multiobjective optimization
• closed-loop optimization (in which an optimizer interacts with a live experimental system)
• memetic algorithms and hybrid evolutionary computation, including hybrids with exact optimizers
• swarm intelligence algorithms, including ant colony optimization and ant-based clustering
• "multiobjectivization" - solving single objective problems by introducing additional objectives
• using surrogate models in optimization, and optimization of expensive black-box problems
• solving many-objective optimization problems (i.e., problems with more than 3 objectives)
• dynamic constraints in optimization - "ephemeral resource constraints"
• co-operative and competitive multi-agent / coevolution approaches to optimization
• reinforcement learning in optimization
• multiobjective machine learning, including multiobjective clustering and model selection
• understanding fitness landscapes and their effects on evolution
• ab initio protein structure prediction
• neutral evolution and evolution of evolvability
• machine learning in radio pulsar discovery
• game theory models and evolution on networks
• optimization in chemical engineering
• directed evolution of DNA aptamers on micro-arrays
• directed evolution of drug combinations (drug discovery)
• evolutionary algorithms in chemometrics

Joshua Knowles is a research scientist at Schlumberger Cambridge Research Ltd, in Cambridgeshire, UK.

Joshua is a former Professor of Natural Computation at the University of Birmingham (now Honorary Fellow), and a former Reader in the School of Computer Science at The UoM.
Joshua was previously a BBSRC David Phillips Fellow, and a Marie Sklodowska-Curie postdoctoral Fellow. 

Joshua helps out for the Royal Voluntary Service and the Cambridge Buddhist Centre. 

FHEA - Fellowship of the Higher Education Authority
PhD (Computer Science)
MSc (CS/Cybernetics)
PGCE (Secondary science)
BSc (Physics with Maths)

Joshua is on the Steering Committee of the EMO Series of International Conferences.
He is also a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College.

Joshua previously taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses on Algorithms, C programming, Optimization, Research Skills, Maths (Foundation).

Joshua's papers have been cited 24,000 times and his h-index is 64. This places him in the top 125 computer scientists in the UK on citation metrics.