Mark A. O'Neill | |
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Mark A. O'Neill
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Born | 3rd November 1959 Grantham, Lincolnshire, United Kingdom |
Residence | Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear, United Kingdom |
Citizenship | British |
Nationality | English |
Fields | Entomology, ecological modeling complex systems, Computer science |
Institutions | Cambridge University, University College London, Oxford University, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne |
Alma mater | University of London |
Doctoral advisor | Ian Dowman |
Known for | DAISY automated species identification system, computational complex systems algorithms applied to Life Sciences, PUPS P3 organic computing environment. |
Mark A. O'Neill is an English biologist and computer scientist with interests in artificial intelligence, systems biology, complex systems and image analysis. He is the creator and lead programmer on a number of computational projects including the DAISY automated species identification system and PUPS P3.
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Educated at The King's School, Grantham and at Sheffield, Cambridge and London Universities.[1]
His interests lie at the interface of biology and computing. He has worked in the areas of artificial life and biologically inspired computing. In particular, he has attempted to answer the question can one create software agents which are capable of carrying a useful computational payload which respond to their environment with the flexibility of a living organism?
He has also investigated how computational methods may be used to analyze biological and quasi biological systems for example; ecosystems and economies.
He is also interested in ethology, especially the emergent social ecosystems which occur as a result of social networking on the internet. His recent projects include the use of artificial intelligence techniques to look at complex socio-economic data [2] He has also self-published on the evolution of sex[3] and the convergent nature of economies and ecologies[4]
On the computer science front he continues to develop and contribute to a number of other open source and commercial software projects and is involved in the design of cluster/parallel computer hardware via his company; Tumbling Dice Ltd. Long-running projects include DAISY, PUPS P3, Cryopid, ITG digital terrain model generation system and Sugarscape.
Dr O'Neill has been a keen naturalist since childhood. In addition to his interests in complex systems and computer science he is fellow of the Royal Entomological Society and an expert in the rearing and ecology of hawk moths.
He is also interested in the use of so called "smart field" technology to monitor ecosystems[5] and has been involved in projects at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne looking at the automatic tracking of bumblebees,[6][7] and other insects[8] using vision, and using both network analysis and remote sensing techniques to monitor the health of ecosystems.
He has also been involved in both computational neuroscience and systems biology, the former association resulting in many papers while working at Oxford. Work in the latter area led to the successful flotation in 2007 of a systems biology company, e-Therapeutics PLC where Dr O'Neill was a senior scientist and assisted with the establishment of the company.[9]
In addition to being a fellow of The Royal Entomological Society, Dr O'Neill is a fellow of the British Computer Society, The Institute of Engineering and Technology and The Royal Astronomical Society. He was also one of the recipients of the BCS Award for Computing in 1992.