Mark D. Longo

Hello everyone. I'm very much looking forward to meeting you all next week. A little about my academic background - I earned my undergraduate degree in foreign affairs from Georgetown University, a masters degree in organismal biology from the University of Colorado, and am currently a 4th year PhD student in evolutionary biology at Stanford (by way of a long stint working at a healthcare software company). I think the following blurb pretty well summarizes my current interests and goals. I'm brewing up some ideas for neural network models as a project while at the SFI summer school.

"My research crosses the boundaries of evolutionary biology, cognitive science, complexity theory, and philosophy. Inspired by neural network models of learning, I am studying how sets of genes evolve together as integrated systems. In the course of this research, I have been struck by similarities between evolutionary processes and mechanisms of learning displayed by brains. I am exploring these similarities further in pursuit of a modern, network-based conception of evolutionary genetics, which I will explicate in my forthcoming book, The Genetic Mind: Genes as Learning Networks."

In my spare time I like to play music, ponder the wonders of nature, and write.