Ed Keedwell BSc (Hons) PhD FHEA

EMail: E.C.Keedwell@ex.ac.uk| Tel: +44 (0)1392 724014

About Me

Welcome to my homepage. I am a Professor of Artificial Intelligence in the College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences at the University of Exeter here in the UK.

News

  • Mohammed Chachan Younis has graduated with a PhD in Feb 2020 - well done Mohammed!
  • Matt Johns and Clodomir Santana Jr. have had their papers accepted to GECCO 2020
  • We are running iGECCO (Interactive Methods @ GECCO 2020) again this year
  • I'm delighted to be working with Prof. Harries and colleagues at Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital on this study investigating viral load in COVID-19 patients

Research Interests

My research interests centre around the study and application of artificial intelligence techniques to real-world problems in the hydroinformatics and bioinformatics. This includes the following techniques:

  • Evolutionary Computation (including multi-objective evolutionary algorithms)
  • Ant Colony Optimisation
  • Particle Swarm Optimisation
  • Hyperheuristics
  • Neural Networks
  • Decision trees and random forests
  • Cellular Automata

These techniques have generally been shown to be good at finding solutions to difficult real-world problems including those in the biosciences and engineering fields. Specific applications that I have worked on include:

  • Bioinformatics and Systems Biology - In particular the discovery of information from large datasets such as gene expression data and single nucleotide polymorphism data; The use of data mining and machine learning in systems biology and the elucidation of regulatory networks from observed data. I work with colleagues from Biosciences and the Systems Biology theme to further this work.
  • Hydroinformatics - In particular the optimisation of water distribution networks; the modelling and optimisation of discolouration risk; the modelling of flooding and drainage systems using nature-inspired techniques. I work closely with colleagues from the Centre for Water Systems in this application area.
  • Networks and Mobile Networks - I am interested in the application of nature-inspired techniques to the optimisation of and routing through computer networks. I am working in collaboration with Prof. Geyong Min in this area.

Research Group

I lead a research group at Exeter which has attracted over £2.5M in funding since 2009. The group currently consists of 4 PhD students and two postdoctoral researchers working on a variety of computing, hydroinformatics and bioinformatics topics. For more information please go to the Nature-Inspired Research Group pages.

Current Projects

I am currently involved in the following projects:

Past Projects

Media Appearances

  • BBC TechTent in 2015 with Rory Cellan-Jones discussing intelligent machines
  • BBC Radio 4's Today programme to discuss the Turing Test - 11th June 2014. Listen to John Humphreys talking to Eugene (which preceded my interview) here.
  • Our paper on a clinical prediction rule for C.Difficile was published in BMC Infectious Diseases, was published as a news story on the BBC News Website and was a feature on BBC Spotlight.

Teaching & Admin

I am currently the Director of Research for Computer Science.

I have taught on a variety of modules over the years and have taught all or parts of:

  • Nature-Inspired Computation (Level 3 & Level M)
  • ITMB Case Studies (Level M)
  • Frontiers of Computer Science (Level 1 & Level 2)

I have supervised a number of final year and MSc projects in recent years. If you are a 2nd year student looking for a project, see my project proposals.

Professional Activities

I am a member of the EPSRC Review College and have performed reviews for equivalent bodies in France, Switzerland, Austria and South Africa. I have acted as a reviewer for a number of journals and have been a member of the programme committee for a number of recent conferences. For a full list, please click here.

Publications

I have published over 140 papers and one book in the fields of evolutionary computing, engineering optimisation and bioinformatics. For a full list, please click here. A list from Google Scholar with citation counts can be found here.