Dr. Karine Miras is an Assistant Professor in the Bioinspired Robotics Lab at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, working at the intersection of Evolutionary Robotics and Artificial Life. Her research has the goal of advancing robot autonomous systems and also deepening our understanding of biological evolution. At the core of her work is exploring how environments shape the traits of evolving organisms, and how developmental processes can be embedded directly into the genetic representations of artificial life forms.
"I'm interested in understanding what allows for the evolution of complex life through the study of artificial life."
embodied intelligence
evo-devo
explainable robot DNA
environmental influences
phenotypic plasticity
gene expression and interaction
My research explained to the general public by NotebookLM
Podcast with NotebookLM
Bioinspired Robotics Lab
My research explained to the general public by me
NEWS
October 8th, 2025. I won a silver medal in the Virtual Creatures Competition 2025.
October 7th, 2025. Niels Fontijne presented our work on biologically plausible representations at the ALife conference 2025.
April 2024. I'm co-organizing the Virtual Creatures Competition 2024.
March 2024. I'm organizing The Evolution of Things Workshop 2024.
February 2024. I've been granted tenure at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
January 2024. I'm the workshop chair of the ALife conference 2024.
March 2019. I'm co-organizing the EvoMan competition.
July 2018. I received an honorable mention award in the Virtual Creatures Contest.