Ernesto Costa

Ernesto Costa is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Informatics Engineering of the University of Coimbra. He received a 3rd Cycle Thesis in Computing Science from the University Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris, France) in 1981 and got a Ph.D. in Electronic Engineering (area of Computing Science) from the University of Coimbra (Coimbra, Portugal) in 1985. Over the years he assumed several leader roles at the University, e.g., president of the Department of Informatics Engineering, Director of CISUC’s research centre, member of the General Council — a governing board of the university. His main research interests are in the areas of Evolutionary Computation, Artificial Life, Complex Systems, Machine Learning, Cognition and Computational Biology. In particular, we work in bio-inspired artificial intelligence, developing novel algorithms and applying them to design, optimization and learning problems, and promoting the cross-fertilization of Evolutionary Computation and Machine Learning. He was the founder and leader of the Artificial Intelligence Group and of the Evolutionary and Complex Systems Group, both within the CISUC research centre. He participated and is currently involved in several projects, national and internacional and got several best paper awards. He was the recipient of the 2009 EvoStar Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Evolutionary Computation. He organized several international scientific events and had published over 250 peer reviewed works in books, journals and proceedings of conferences.