Mengjie Zhang's Homepage

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	Mengjie Zhang (Meng) BE, ME (AUH), PhD (RMIT), MIEEE, MACM
	Associate Professor (Reader)
	Evolutionary Computation Research Group
	School of Engineering and Computer Science
	Email: Mengjie.Zhang@ecs.vuw.ac.nz
	Phone: +64 4 463 5654
	Fax: +64 4 463 5045

Vacancy: Summer Research Scholarships/Assitantships

Topics: Evolutionary Computing: genetic programming, evolutionary computer vision and image analysis, evolutionary art, etc.
Closing date: Availble NOW, as soon as filled 2009 (Closed)
Contact: A/Prof Mengjie Zhang

Room: CO 427 Postal Address

Research Interests

My main area of interest is artificial intelligence, particularly

Genetic Programming and Evolutionary Computing
Evolutionary Computer Vision and Image Analysis
Machine Learning, Data Mining and Web Mining

Research Projects, Funding and Scholarships

I am working on several research projects.
I have been awarded the following research fundings:
- Toward Optimal Offspring Selection in Genetic Programming. BuildIT Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, New Zealand. 2009-2011. Grant: $123,053. (PI)
- Genetic Programming for Classification Tasks. Marsden Fund of New Zealand, 2009-2012. Grant: $465,000. (PI)
- Novel Program Structures and Search Algorithms in Genetic Programming, Marsden Fund of New Zealand, 2006-2008. Grant: $140,000. (PI)
- Identification of Authors in Chinese Email, Natural Science Fundation of Hebei Province, China, 2006-2008. Grant: $50,000. (with Guifa Teng)
- Machine Learning for Speech Recognition, New Economy Research Fund, 2001-2004. (with David Crabbe, etc.) Grant: $330,000.
- Novel PSO Topologies and Search Algorithms for Pattern Classification. University Research Fund, Victoria University of Wellington, 2009-2010. Grant: $25,000. (PI)
- Evolutionary Multiple-criterion Optimization for Visual Object Detection. University Research Fund, Victoria University of Wellington, 2009-2010. Grant: $20,000. (with Mark Johnston)
- Particle Swarm Optimisation for Image Recognition. University Research Fund, Victoria University of Wellington, 2008-2009. Grant: $38,239. (PI)
- Simplification and Class Imbalance in Genetic Programming. University Research Fund, Victoria University of Wellington, 2008-2009. Grant: $22,580. (with Mark Johnston)
- Genetic Programming for Image Recognition, University Research Fund, Victoria University of Wellington, 2007. Grant: $48,000. (PI)
- Program Representations in Genetic Programming, University Research Fund, Victoria University of Wellington, 2005-2006. Grant: $45,500. (PI)
- Genetic Programming for Multiclass Classification, University Research Fund, Victoria University of Wellington, 2004-2005. Grant: $25,000. (PI)
- Novel Genetic Programming Techniques for Image Recognition Tasks, University Research Fund, Victoria University of Wellington, 2004. Grant: $12,200. (PI)
PhD Sholarships: Good students (GPA of A- or above) can apply for the following scholarships:
- Victoria PhD scholarship (Closing dates: 1 March 2010, for both domestic and international students)
- New Zealand International Doctoral Research Scholarships (NZIDRS) (Closing date: 15 July 2010. International students only.)
- Vice Chancellor's Strategic PhD Scholarship The topic is: Particle Swarm Optimization for Image Recognition (with Mark Johnston and Mengjie Zhang). Descriptions and application methods can be seen from here. (Closing date: 15 May 2009, for both domestic and international students) (Closed)
- Marsden PhD Scholarship: I am looking for a PhD student in Genetic Programming (Evolutionary Computing). I have full funding available to cover tuition fees, living, and travel. Please email me for more information if you have a Masters or Honours degree and a good background in evolutionary computing and/or machine learning! (Closed)
Contact me if you want to do a PhD in my research areas and want to get a scholarship.
Summer Research Sholarships/Assistantships (Closed):
- My research grants can support several summer research scholarships/assistants (during Oct 2009 to Feb 2010) and Honour projects in 2009. Succesful applicants will be paid.
- Applicants are expected to have a B+/A- or above for COMP307, and have strong programming skills in C++/Java.
- If you want to gain work experience in summer or want to do an Honours project in 2010, please contact me.

Current and Past Research Students

You can also find a list of recent thesis/project students and their theses here.

Selected Publications

A number of selected publications can be viewed here. Some technical reports can be found here.

Genetic Programming Research Packages

Tree-based Genetic Programming research package for classification at Victoria University (VGP): Download Manual
Linear Genetic Programming research package at Victoria University (VUWLGP): Download Manual

Upcoming Conferences

Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2010)
Special Session on Evolutionary Computer Vision for 2010 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, part of IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI 2010).
The 23rd Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI 2010)
The 24th International Conference Image and Vision Computing New Zealand (IVCNZ 2009)
Evo* 2010 , including EuroGP2010, EvoIASP2010, EvoEnvironment 2010, etc.

Teaching

In 2010, I will be teaching the following courses:

COMP307: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. (Trimester 1)
COMP 422: Data Mining, Neural Nets, and Genetic Programming. (Trimester 2)
690 and 591 in COMP, ECEN, ECSE, NWEN, SWEN. (Full Year)

Administration

I am the Associate Dean (Postgraduate Research), Engineering
I am the Postgraduate Research Thesis Coordinator of the School of Engineering and Computer Science (includingComputer Science, Software Engineering, Network Engineering, Computer System Engineering, and Electronic Engineering).
Contact me if you are interested in doing a PhD at VUW in any area of the above engineering and computer science disciplines.

Professional Activities

Chairs for International Conferences and Guest Editors for International Journals
- Guest Editor, Special Issue on Evolutionary Image Analysis and Signal Processing, Journal of Artificial Evolution and Applications. 2010
- Special Session Chair, Evolutionary Computer Vision, IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation CEC2010/WCCI2010, CEC2009, CEC2008/WCCI2008, CEC2007, CEC2006.
- Area Chair, The 10th Asian Conference on Computer Vision (ACCV2010), 2010
- Guest Editor, Special Issue on Evolutionary Optimisation and Learning, (Journal of) Soft Computing. Springer. 2009/2010.
- Guest Editor, Special Issue on simulated evolution and learning,, (Journal of) Evolutionary Intelligence. Springer. 2009.
- Program Co-Chair, The 7th International Conference on Simulated Evolution and Learning (SEAL2008)
- Program Co-Chair, The 21st Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI'08) .
Associate Editors/Editorial Board Member) for International Journals
Program Committee Member for International Conferences
- IEEE Conference on Evolutionary Computation: CEC 2006, CEC 2007, CEC 2008, CEC 2009 (ECV, Robot), CEC 2010
- European Conference on Genetic Programming: EuroGP 2008, EuroGP 2009, EuroGP 2010
- Genetic and Evolutionary Computation COference (GECCO 2009, GECCO 2010)
- International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR 2010)
- International Conference on Artificial Evolution (EA'09)
- International Conference on Advanced Intelligence (ICAI-08, ICAI 2010)
- International Conference on Evolutionary Computation (ICEC 2009)
- Australian Conference on Artificial Life (ACAL09)
- The 1st Asian Conference on Machine Learning (ACML'09)
- International Conference on Active Media Technology (AMT 2006, AMT 2009, AMT 2010)
- European Conference on Evolutionary Computation in Image Analysis and Signal Processing: EvoIASP2004, EvoIASP2005, EvoIASP2006, EvoIASP2007, EvoIASP2008, EvoIASP 2009, EvoIASP 2010
- European Workshops on Environmental Issues (EvoENVIRONMENT2009, EvoENVIRONMENT2010)
- Asian Pacific Workshop on Genetic Programming: APWGP2004, APWGP2006
- Pacific-Asian International Conference on Knowledge Discovery in Databases: PAKDD2006, PAKDD2007, PAKDD2008
- International Conference on Simulated Evolution and Learning: SEAL2006, SEAL2008
- Australian/Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence: AI2005, AI2006, AI2007, AI 2008, AI 2009.
- International Conference Image and Vision Computing New Zealand: IVCNZ2001, IVCNZ2002, IVCNZ2003, IVCNZ2004, IVCNZ2005, IVCNZ2006, IVCNZ2007, IVCNZ 2008, IVCNZ 2009
- International Conference on Neural Computing: ICNC'07, ICNC'09
- Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence: PRICAI2006
- IADIS Intelligent Systems and Agents: ISA2005,ISA2006,ISA2007, ISA2008, ISA2009
- International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and Applications: ISDA2006, ISDA2007.
- International Conference on Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems: KES 2004
- International Conference on Knowledge Science, Engineering and Management: KSEM 2007
- International Workshop on Domain Driven Data Mining: DDDM2007, DDDM 2008
- Australasian Workshop on Data Mining and Web Intelligence: AWDMWIW 2004
- Natural Language Processing and Ontology Engineering Workshop: NLPOE 2008, NLPOE 2009.
Reviewer of International Journals
Professional Membership:
- Board Member, Evolutionary Computation Technical Committee (ECTC), IEEE Computational Intelligence Society
- Member, IEEE NZ Central Section Committee
- Member of IEEE, IEEE CS, IEEE CIS, IEEE MSCS
- Member of ACM, ACM SIGEVO
Tutorials for International Conferences
- Tutorial on Evolutionary Computer Vision, GECCO 2009.
- Tutorial on Genetic Programming for Data Mining, First Australasian Computational Intelligence Summer School (ACISS'09) (also in AI 2009)