John R. Koza is a computer scientist and a consulting professor at Stanford University, most notable for his work in pioneering the use of genetic programming for the optimization of complex problems, and for the evolution of computer programs which solve them. He was a cofounder of Scientific Games Inc., a company which built computer systems to run state lotteries in the United States. He also invented the scratch-off lottery ticket.
Koza has a PhD in computer science from the University of Michigan. His thesis was titled On Inducing a Non-Trivial, Parsimonious Grammar for a Given Sample of Sentences.
John Koza has his own company Genetic Programming Inc., and uses a 1000 node Beowulf cluster, composed of Pentium II and DEC Alpha processors, to do his research.
Koza was recently featured in Popular Science for his work on evolutionary programming that alters its own code to find far more complex solutions. The machine, which he calls the "invention machine" has created antennae, circuits, lenses, and received a patent from the US Patent Office.
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