Thomas Helmuth

Biography

Thomas Helmuth ’09 focuses his research on genetic programming, a subfield of artificial intelligence that borrows ideas from biological evolution to artificially evolve populations of computer programs. His work examines the use of genetic programming for program synthesis, the generation of programs similar to those that humans write. This work has explored the effects of different methods of selecting which programs will reproduce on problem-solving performance and population diversity. Helmuth earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science and math from Hamilton and his master’s and doctorate in computer science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. During the two years before he returned to Hamilton to teach, he worked as an assistant professor of computer science at Washington and Lee University.

Research Interest

Genetic programming, evolutionary computation, program synthesis from examples, search-based software engineering