Charles Ofria | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 13, 1973 New York, NY (United States) |
| Alma mater | Stony Brook University (B.S., 1994) California Institute of Technology (Ph.D., 1999) |
| Known for | Digital evolution, Avida |
| Awards | Withrow Distinguished Scholar Award (2006, 2016)[1] NSF CAREER Award (2007) Withrow Teaching Excellence Award (2010)[2] |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer Science, Evolutionary Biology |
| Institutions | Michigan State University |
| Doctoral advisor | Christoph Adami |
| Other academic advisors | Richard Lenski |
| Website | www |
Dr. Charles A. Ofria is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Michigan State University, the director of the Digital Evolution (DEvo) Lab there, and Director of the BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action. He is the son of the late Charles Ofria,[3] who developed the first fully integrated shop management program for the automotive repair industry. Ofria attended Stuyvesant High School and graduated from Ward Melville High School in 1991. He obtained a B.S. in Computer Science, Pure Mathematics, and Applied Mathematics from Stony Brook University in 1994, and a Ph.D. in Computation and Neural Systems from the California Institute of Technology in 1999. Ofria's research focuses on the interplay between computer science and Darwinian evolution.[4]
Ofria is one of the designers of Avida, an artificial life software platform to study the evolutionary biology of self-replicating and evolving computer programs (digital organisms, see also Digital organism simulators). Avida has been used extensively to study the basic processes that underlie Darwinian evolution.[5] Avida is under active development in Ofria's Digital Evolution Lab at Michigan State University and was originally designed by Ofria, Chris Adami and C. Titus Brown at Caltech in 1993.