Emma Hart

Emma Hart is an established academic, currently serving as a professor at Edinburgh Napier University with a focus on computational intelligence. She is the editor-in-chief of the "Journal of Evolutionary Computation," a publication by MIT Press. Hart has also played a key role in the Fundamentals of Collective Adaptive Systems, a Future & Emerging Technologies (FET) Proactive Initiative, which she coordinated. Her work extends into the public sphere, as evident by her 2021 TED talk titled "Self-assembling robots and the potential of artificial evolution".

In recognition of her contributions to the field, Hart was the recipient of the 2018 Bronze Award in International Human-Competitive Awards (Humies), a testament to her pioneering work in the field of evolution computation. Along with Dr. Kevin Sim, she won a Bronze Award in the International Humies competition for their collaborative work on predicting wind damage in Forestry. This achievement was further cemented when she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2022. She has been invited to keynote at various international conferences such as CLAIO 2020, IEEE CEC 2019, EURO 2016, and UKCI 2015, demonstrating her expertise and influence in the field.

Beyond her academic endeavors, Hart has also taken on leadership roles in various committees. She served as the General Chair of PPSN 2016 and was the Track Chair at GECCO for several years. Furthermore, she was elected to the Executive Board of the ACM SIG on Evolutionary Computation and was appointed to the Steering Committee that developed Scotland's AI Strategy published in 2021. Her work and insights have been featured in prominent media outlets such as New Scientist, the Guardian, Telegraph, and the Conversation. As the leader of a group in Nature-Inspired Intelligent Systems at Edinburgh Napier University, she continues to push the boundaries of computational intelligence and its applications.