post-doc: Evolution of Agent-Based Behavior with Genetic Programming
Where: Toulouse, 
France
What:
Over the past few years, we have a develop a platform, named ISiCell (isicell.irit.fr), that allows to co-design agent-based models for cell biology. This platform allows to visually develop the agent/cell behaviors, manually setup the model’s parameters and visualize the results in live. Additionally, we have developed a Python wrapper that allows to access to any parameters and measured values within the simulation. We are now using the platform to produce models together with biologists in different domains such as oncolytic viruses, neurodevelopment and inflammatory processes.
While plenty of algorithms already exist to explore parameters (including evolutionary algorithms), the aim of this post-doc is now to allow the exploration of the model behavior space. We want to use genetic programming or an equivalent approach to allow for the modification of existing rules of a model and the proposition of new rules/hypothesis. The aim is to be able to evaluate both the efficiency of the newly generated models and the distance to the original human-made model. Indeed, we want to generate models that are close to the original one (thus limiting the number of automatically made hypotheses) and performing better in term of comparison to biological data.
The hired postdoc fellow will be hosted in a team composed of PhD students and postdoc both specialists in evolutionary computation, genetic programming (CGP in particular) and agent-based modeling. He/She will work together with biologists from either or both the Centre de Recherche en Cancérologie de Toulouse (CRCT - INSERM) and the RESTORE lab (INSERM) both to get specific data for the model calibrations and to evaluate the biological correctness of automatically generated models.
Duration: 12 to 18 months
Location: Toulouse, University Toulouse Capitole, IRIT-CNRS
Salary: based on experience
Who: Sylvain Cussat-Blanc, sylvain.cussat-blanc@ut-capitole.fr
When: Until 2025-12-30 23:00
Presented at next GECCO?: yes