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Risto Miikkulainen

Professor

Risto Miikkulainen is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin and VP of AI Research at Cognizant AI Lab. He received an M.S. in Engineering from the Helsinki University of Technology (now Aalto University) in 1986, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UCLA in 1990. His current research focuses on methods and applications of neuroevolution, as well as neural network models of natural language processing and vision; he is an author of over 500 articles in these research areas.

Research

Research Areas:
Research Interests:
  • Neuroevolution
  • Cognitive Science
  • Computational Neuroscience
Current Research:

My research focuses on biologically-inspired computation such as neural networks and evolutionary computation. On one hand, the goal is to understand biological information processing, and on the other, to develop intelligent artificial systems that learn and adapt by observing and interacting with the environment.  The three main focus areas are: (1) Decision AI, in particular methods of neuroevolution, generative AI, and deep learning, (2) Cognitive Science, i.e. models of natural language processing, memory, and learning that, in particular, shed light on disorders such as schizophrenia and aphasia; and (3) Computational Neuroscience, i.e. development, structure, and function of the visual cortex, episodic memory, and language processing.

Research Labs & Affiliations:

UTCS Neural Networks Research Group
Cognizant AI Lab

Select Publications

Risi, S., Ha, D., Tang, Y., and Miikkulainen, R. (2025). Neuroevolution: Harnessing Creativity in AI Model Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Miikkulainen, R. (2025). Neuroevolution Insights Into Biological Neural Computation.Science 387, eadp7478.

Prabhakaran, D., Grasemann, H., Kiran, S., Miikkulainen, R. (2025). How the Stroop Effect Arises from Optimal Response Times in Laterally Connected Self-Organizing Maps..  In Proceedings of the 47th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Cogsci 2025, San Francisco).

Qiu, X. an Miikkulainen, R. (2024). Uncertainty Quantification in Semantic Space for Large Language Models. In Proceedings of the 38th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2024, Vancouver, CA).

Meyerson, E., Francon, O., Sargent, D., Hodjat, B., and Miikkulainen, R. (2024). Unlocking the Potential of Global Human Expertise.. In Proceedings of the 38th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2024, Vancouver, CA).

View complete list

Awards & Honors

  • 2025 - Gold Award, Human-Competitive Results Competition, GECCO
  • 2024 - Best-Paper Award, Neural Networks Journal
  • 2024 - College of Fellows, INNS
  • 2023 - AAAI Fellow
  • 2020 - Evolutionary Computation Pioneer Award, IEEE CIS
  • 2018 - Deployed Application Award, AAAI
  • 2017 - Gabor Award, INNS
  • 2017 - Outstanding Paper of the Decade Award, ISAL
  • 2015-2017 - IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Distinguished Lecturer
  • 2016 - IEEE Fellow

Contact Info

Risto Miikkulainen
Professor
Homepage
(512) 471-9571
risto@cs.utexas.edu
GDC 3.826
CV