2021 ISAL Summer School 

The 2021 Summer School on Artificial Life was a part of a virtual conference ALIFE 2021 (Prague, Czech Republic, July 19-23, 2021).

As in past years, ISAL will be running an introductory session the day before this year’s Artificial Life conference! This is a chance for newcomers to the field to learn about the many exciting topics that we study in artificial life and have a bit more context going into the conference. The session will feature a high level introduction, an overview of the history and philosophy behind the field, and 6 short talks providing capsule summaries of some of the sub-fields of artificial life.

The schedule (all times are in CEST, for consistency with the conference):

• 2pm: Introduction (15 minutes) – Emily Dolson

• 2:15pm: History and Philosophy of ALife (1.5 hours) – Mark Bedau

• 3:45pm: Break (15 minutes)

• 4pm: Intersection of ALife and AI (20 minutes) – Lana Sinapayen

• 4:20pm: Digital Evolution (20 minutes) – Luis Zaman

• 4:40pm: Evolutionary Robotics (20 minutes) – Sam Kreigman

• 5pm Break (15 minutes)

• 5:15pm: Droplet research (20 minutes) – Silvia Holler

• 5:35pm: Artificial ecologies (20 minutes) – Emily Dolson

• 5:55pm: Artificial Life for social good (20 minutes) – Alex Penn

• 6:15pm Wrap-up and discussion – Emily Dolson and Anya Vostinar