Please post your best resources for this major under the appropriate section below:
A. Company Leads
B. Networking Opportunities
C. Project Expertise
D. Other Resources
Please use small font (10 point Arial) and add your name w/ a dash (- Joe Student) at the end of your submissions.
Your work here benefits not only you but all UAT students in your major who come after you. Thanks!

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A. Company Leads for This Major (Names, Profiles, Site Visits, Mentors, Internship Info, etc.)
Which are top co's? Which are local to Tempe? Internship schedules? Where are UAT alumni with this major?
Post here...
... Air Force
If you’re looking for a job that will also give some training while you go the Air Force, I believe, has some programs to look into. I thought about going for a little while. The Air Force is using AI for a lot of their plains so there are a few things to look into. – Camren Hughes
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B. Networking Opps for this Major (Trade Assoc'ns, Conferences, Social Networks, etc.)
What do Student Memberships cost? Which conferences can you attend for free as a volunteer?
Post here...
Best Competitions
If you’re going for more of the robotics with programming then there is a competition called BEST. It’s a competition were people give teams a problem, like getting so many balls into a box within a certain amount of time with some special rules and bonuses they can do, and the company gives the teams parts that they can use. Every team has like a month or two before the competition to get a robot together. This doesn’t really have anything to do with programming but it will look really good on your portfolio if your team does any good. – Camren Hughes
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Conferences and Competitions
http://www.alife.org/links.html
This is a list of all the upcoming and previous conferences and competitions done by the international society of artificial life, if you're looking for possible conferences to see or what has been said in the field in previous ones this is a great place to go to check that out. - John Cross

Design of Collective Intelligence (DECOI)
"Self organisation is all around us. We observe all kinds of self organising patterns in flora and fauna. Also many IT applications nowadays involve self organisation, for example, swarms of robots, computer clusters, artificial life applications, etcetera. Recent research in AI looks at the analysis and design of collective intelligence within such groups of entities. Evolution, learning, social interactions and other adaptation mechanisms make such intelligence possible." (http://www.decoi2007.nl/) The registration fee for this set of workshops / lectures was EUR 75, however, the registration has closed. Next year's event is highly likely and you can go as a student but you'll need to register as soon as registration opens up to secure your seat. Dr. Zela (UAT) is available for more information if this interests you and he's willing to sponsor / mentor studies for individuals that have taken an active interest in AI / AL fields. - Chris Schoerning
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http://www.decoi2007.nl/
Website for an international conference on AI and Robotics, you can find a lot of very interesting information that was discussed at this conference on the site as figure out who to talk to in the field based off of what they presented. Even though the conference already took place it is for sure worth taking a look at. - John Cross

Getting Work Early
The Bungie Company (creators of Halo and stuff) has Collage Recruiting. It’s good to start early and be persistent as what they say on their web site. But anyway, Bungie is apparently looking game programmers and designers all the time so this isn’t just for the Artificial Life people and artificial life and intelligence are used in games, in case you didn’t know. – Camren Hughes

Robotic Workouts
I found more competitions for robotics and AI or AL, which ever you happen to be doing. This web (http://robots.net/rcfaq.html) has all kinds of robotic competition dates and different kinds from just building a robot or programming. – Camren Hughes
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C. Project Expertise (UAT Portfolios, Independent Projects, Project Groups, etc.)
What are UAT portfolios and independent projects in this area? What local and online project groups exist?
Post here...
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Micro-Air Vehicles (MAV)
The University of Arizona Tuscon branch has a MAV club for those interested, their website is http://clubs.engr.arizona.edu/mav/index.html . While small flying vehicles may not initially strike someone's artificial life chords, techniques for keeping these little robots up in the air for extended periods of time and navigation can fall under the ALife umbrella. Automation in robotics is a valuable way to gain experience in utilizing your ALife programming techniques in a tangible medium. - Chris Schoerning
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SIGEVO

SIGEVO is a special interest group of ACM that focuses on genetic and evolutionary algorithms. The website, http://www.sigevo.org/ ,
is a good resource for conferences, newsletters, and getting to know other people that have had experience or a vested interest in Gen/Evo algorithms. -Chris Schoerning
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D. Other Major Resources Info
Put any other career planning major resources info here (UAT requirements, general advice, etc.)
Post here...

AI Applets and Simulations
This website is a list of very intriguing artificial life simulations and applets, you can check this link to see some work thats already been done in AI programming and the type of thing it is capable of.
http://www.aridolan.com/ad/Alife.html - John Cross

Artificial Life - MIT Press
http://www.mitpressjournals.org
This is a great journal that provides literature about artificial life projects, books, and reviews of conferences. A good portion of my annotated bibliographies pull material from this journal. The UAT library has the journals or you can obtain a student membership for $32.00 (USD) a year for online access, receiving a paper journal costs extra. - Chris Schoerning


My understanding thus far...
It's not about creating life, it's about understanding and exploiting life's methods for use in the engineering realm. If you really want to create artificial life, I advise you to finish what you're doing here and apply that knowledge to a biology degree. If you're looking for unorthodox, at this time, yet amazingly effective algorithmic solutions, look for evolutionary (EA) or genetic algorithms (GA). I still don't understand the full importance of cellular automata (CA) and the only feasible item I can see it being put into use for would be complex, multi-dimensional simulations.
Your resources in a fixed medium are somewhat constrained at UAT but they're expanding; if you're really interested in these studies you need to keep poking people in the ribs and sharing the resources you find. The UAT Wiki could also use some help (http://wiki.known-universe.com/wiki) as it does have an ALife section that is chalk full of resources but currently lacks an overview of what's being done at UAT with ALife. Also, on a personal note, you may not be able to find a job by doing a Monster.com search for ALife Programmer. You'll need to use what you learn to make current practices better or create new methods that replace the current ones. - Chris Schoerning

Artificial Life Uses
This web (http://stewdean.com/alife/uses.html) is a nice doc on the uses of Artificial Life. It goes over things like viruses, entertainment, war, exc. So if there’s anyone one that’s taking AL but don’t know what you really want to do with it this site might help get some insight. – Camren Hughes

Other Resources
This is a short list (hopefully it can be a long list or its own category someday) of databases, search engines, and other resources that you can goto for more information about ALife. Hope this helps in your searching! - Chris Schoerning

The Laboratory of Robotics and Artificial Life
http://gral.ip.rm.cnr.it/

The New Artificial Life Database
http://www.aridolan.com/ad/adb/adtop.html

Science.gov
http://www.science.gov

Simon Kirby
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~simon/ (NOTE: This link no longer works and I haven't any idea why. Simon Kirby has a wealth of information about natural language processing (NLP) and utilizing artificial life techniques)

Synthetic Chromosome Article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/oct/06/genetics.climatechange
Very interesting article about another aspect of artificial life, synthetically created chromosomes. Definatly something you should know and be familiar with if you plan on majoring in AI programming since this could be very influential in the future of this field. - John Cross