The Evolution of Programming Brian Mulloy worked with Professors Robert Savit and Rick Riolo refining approaches to genetic programming. He is shown here at his office at ArborText.
T alk about complex systems.
As a physics undergraduate, his research work with professors Robert Savit and Rick Riolo helped advance the fledgling field of genetic programming, an approach to systems development in which individual computer programs focused on a given task can exchange data among themselves, evolving over time to become better adapted to solving the problem at hand. He spent time during his third year doing research in high-energy spin physics with Professor Alan Krisch , working with a team of other undergraduates designing, assembling, and calibrating a polarimeter. Learning that physics professor Robert Savit directed U-M's Program for the Study of Complex Systems, Mulloy sent him a resume and found a research position. Savit was looking to apply the techniques of genetic programming to performing time-series analyses of financial data. Roughly speaking, genetic programming applies the concepts of Darwinian evolution and cross-fertilization to develop computer programs that are particularly well suited to solving a given problem.