{"id":1345,"date":"2026-03-08T18:43:32","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T17:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.evostar.org\/2026\/?page_id=1345"},"modified":"2026-03-14T21:15:33","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T20:15:33","slug":"julian-francis-miller-awardee-keynote","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.evostar.org\/2026\/julian-francis-miller-awardee-keynote\/","title":{"rendered":"“Julian Francis Miller” 2025 Awardee Keynote"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Jean-Baptiste Mouret<\/a>
INRIA, France<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Endless forms most beautiful: quality, diversity, and the MAP-Elites algorithm<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Endless forms most beautiful: quality, diversity, and the MAP-Elites algorithm<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The dominant theoretical framework for artificial evolution has long been, and to a large extent still is, single-objective black-box optimization. This view sidelines one of the most striking and enigmatic feats of natural evolution: its ability to autonomously generate an ever-expanding variety of refined yet disparate lifeforms. Put differently, it focuses on micro-evolution, and ignores macro-evolution. In this talk, I will trace the major milestones in our quest to design algorithms that capture some of this generative power while remaining simple and practical. This family of algorithms is now known as \u00ab quality-diversity algorithms \u00bb. I will illustrate the talk with recent results from diverse fields, from chemistry to robotics, and discuss the main open challenges and opportunities .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jean-Baptiste Mouret<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Jean-Baptiste Mouret is a senior researcher (“directeur de recherche”) at Inria (Nancy, France) and the co-founder of Bleu Robotics. His research intertwines evolutionary computation, data-efficient machine learning and robotics to design creative machines that adapt and learn from their experience. He is one of the architects of the quality-diversity algorithm family, including MAP-Elites. His work was featured on the cover of Nature (2015) and funded by an ERC Starting Grant (ResiBots). He received several awards, including the “Prix La Recherche” (2016) and the “Distinguished Young Investigator in Artificial Life” (2017).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More information about the “Julian Francis Miller” Award at https:\/\/species-society.org\/julian-francis-miller-award\/<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jean-Baptiste MouretINRIA, France Endless forms most beautiful: quality, diversity, and the MAP-Elites algorithm Endless forms most beautiful: quality, diversity, and the MAP-Elites algorithm The dominant theoretical framework for artificial evolution has long been, and to a large extent still is, single-objective black-box optimization. This view sidelines one of the most striking and enigmatic feats of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1345","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.evostar.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.evostar.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.evostar.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.evostar.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.evostar.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1345"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.evostar.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1393,"href":"https:\/\/www.evostar.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1345\/revisions\/1393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.evostar.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}