John A. Rieffel

Contact DEMO Lab Voice: (781) 736-3366 Information Computer Science Dept., MS018 Fax: (781) 736-2741 Brandeis University E-mail: jrieff[email protected] Waltham, MA 02454 USA WWW: www.cs.brandeis.edu/~jrieffel

Research My interest lies in developmental, embryological, and evolutionary approaches to the problem of fully Interests automating the design and assembly of robust, modular, and scalably complex systems. The promise of this evolutionary fabrication lies in discovering not just novel robotic designs, but novel means of assembling those designs as well, all without human intervention. This has applications in fields ranging from product invention to planetary exploration. Further interests include Evolutionary Robotics, Co-evolution, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

Current Status Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science Since 2001 Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts • Dissertation Topic: Evolutionary Fabrication: Towards Fully Automated Design, Assembly, and Deployment • Advisor: Jordan Pollack, Dynamical and Evolutionary Machine Organization (DEMO) Lab • Expected completion date: May 2006

Education Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts Fall 2001 - Spring 2004 M.A., Computer Science, May 2004

Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania Fall 1995 - Spring 1999 B.S., Engineering, May 1999 B.A., Computer Science, May 1999

Teaching Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts Experience Head Teaching Assistant • CS120a: Performance Analysis of Storage Systems Fall 2005 • CS21B: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. Spring 2002 - 2005 Additional responsibilities included leading a weekly recitation

Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania Teaching and Laboratory Assistant • Engineering 58: Control Theory • Computer Science 63: Artificial Intelligence • Engineering 21: Digital Logic Design • Engineering 72: Electronic Circuit Applications

Professional Biology Department, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 2002 - present Experience Software and Systems Consultant. Lead Developer for LifeSongX, behavioral and acoustical analysis software, used primarily to studydrosophila courtship. LifesongX is currently deployed at Behavioral Genetics Laboratories at Brandeis University, Stanford University, and Dartmouth College. See http://lifesong.bio.brandeis.edu for a list of journal publications citing LifesongX.

Bluefin Robotics, Cambridge, MA. 2001 Software Engineer. Developed and refined key components and device drivers for their QNX-based real-time software for Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) control. Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) Lab, MIT, Cambridge, MA 1999-2001 Research Engineer. Assisted in developing, building and piloting the lab’s new class of robotic submersibles. Over 15 weeks of at-sea deployment, including AOSN ’99 (Monterey Bay, CA), GOATS ’00 (La Spezia, Italy).

Honors and • Student Developer Scholarship Award, Apple World Wide Developer Conference. June, 2005. Awards • Sigma Xi Honorary Research Society. Associate Member since April, 1999. • First Place Team. 1997, 1998 and 1999 Philadelphia Regional IEEE Micromouse Competition.

Refereed Rieffel, J. and Pollack, J. (2005) “Crossing the Fabrication Gap: Evolving Assembly Plans to Build Conference 3-D Objects”. 2005 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation. Publications Rieffel, J. and Pollack, J. (2005) “Automated Assembly as Situated Development: Using Artificial Ontogenies to Evolve Buildable 3-D Objects”. Proceedings of the 2005 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference.

Rieffel, J. and Pollack, J. (2005). “Evolutionary Fabrication: The Emergence of Novel Assem- bly Methods in Artificial Ontogenies”. SEEDS workshop, at the 2005 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference.

Rieffel, J. and Pollack, J. (2005) “Evolving Assembly Plans for Fully Automated Design and Assem- bly.” Proceedings of the 2005 NASA/DoD Conference on Evolvable Hardware.

Rieffel, J. and Pollack, J. (2004) “Artificial Ontogenies for Real World Design and Assembly.” Ninth International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems (ALIFE9) Workshop: Self-Organization and Development in Artificial and Natural Systems (SODANS) 2004.

Rieffel, J. and Pollack, J. (2004) “The Emergence of Ontogenic Scaffolding in a Stochastic Develop- ment Environment”. Proceedings of the 2004 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, Springer Verlag, 2004.

Rieffel, J., DiLeo, C., and Maxwell, B.A. (1999) “Evolving Optimal Histogram Parameters for Object Recognition”, Proceedings, SPIE Intelligent Robots and Computer Vision XVIII, September, 1999.

Skills • Programming Languages: fluent in Scheme, C++, Ojective-C. Familiarity with Perl, Pascal, Python, Java, FORTRAN. • Assembly Languages: PIC, 6811, 8051. • Operating Systems: Unix/Linux, Windows, Mac OS X • Analog and Digital Circuit Design • Proficiency in French • Extensive world travel experience • Activities: Juggling, Improvisational Comedy, Cooking, Poetry, Bicycling, Go