Ben Paechter

Prof. Ben Paechter is a leading academic at the School of Computing Engineering and the Built Environment, Edinburgh Napier University, specializing in evolutionary algorithms and swarm robotics. As a Professor, he has shaped research directions in computational optimization and adaptive systems for over two decades.

• Research Themes: Evolutionary Swarm Robotics, Multi-Objective Optimization, Hyper-heuristics, Neural Architecture Search
• Key Projects: FOCAS (European Commission), KTP: Intelligent Agents (Innovate UK), PerAda (Self-Aware Systems)
• Collaborations: CAVES Research Group, Centre for Algorithms, Visualisation and Evolving Systems

His article trends demonstrate expertise in cross-domain hyper-heuristics, swarm behavior tree evolution, and neural network architecture optimization. Recent works (2023-2024) focus on GPU-accelerated evolutionary algorithms and hierarchical swarm control systems.

Scientific Awards:

• Fellow of the British Computer Society (FBCS)
• Chartered IT Professional (CITP)
• GECCO Best Paper Nomination (2018)

Advising & Grants: Supervised 5 PhD students including Paul Lapok (planar mechanisms) and Andreas Steyven (swarm diversity). Secured £2.2M+ in funding across 13 projects, including EU FOCAS (£639,999) and Innovate UK grants.