John Koza

Who is John Koza?

John R. Koza is a computer scientist and a former consulting professor at Stanford University, most notable for his work in pioneering the use of genetic programming for the optimization of complex problems. He was a cofounder of Scientific Games Corporation, a company which built computer systems to run state lotteries in the United States. John Koza is also credited with being the creator of the 'scratch card' with the help of retail promotions specialist Daniel Bower.

Koza has a PhD in computer science from the University of Michigan. His thesis was titled On Inducing a Non-Trivial, Parsimonious Grammar for a Given Sample of Sentences.

John Koza has his own company Genetic Programming Inc., and uses a 1000 node Beowulf cluster, composed of Pentium II and DEC Alpha processors, to do his research.

Koza was featured in Popular Science for his work on evolutionary programming that alters its own code to find far more complex solutions. The machine, which he calls the "invention machine", has created antennae, circuits, and lenses, and has received a patent from the US Patent Office.