Charles Ofria

Professor: Computer Science@MSU; Director: BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action; President: International Society for Artificial Life

[Charles Ofria @CharlesOfria]

@okw Thank you so much Olaf! In the same vein, you made it so much easier for me knowing that ISAL would be in great hands after I stepped down.

[Charles Ofria @CharlesOfria]

Being a professor's assistant DOES seem like it would be so much easier in retrospect...

[Jeff Clune @jeffclune]

True story. When I first wanted to enter science I Googled the type of AI I was interested in. I kept finding mentions of @CharlesOfria, but he was an "Assistant Professor." For 1-2 frustrating days I thought "I don't want the professor's assistant! Who is the real professor?!?"

[Charles Ofria @CharlesOfria]

@DrMikeWiser Oh, and Schmigadoon!! If you like musicals, it makes fun of all of them (in a loving way). Very funny.

[Charles Ofria @CharlesOfria]

@DrMikeWiser I also enjoyed both See and Mythic Quest. I’ve heard good things about both Severance and Foundation (which is apparently very different from the book), but haven’t see either yet.

[Charles Ofria @CharlesOfria]

@DrMikeWiser Can I give 2/3 of a like? ;-)

[Charles Ofria @CharlesOfria]

@TedPavlic For regular collaborators, though it’s back and forth editing the whole thing, which always seems so much slower than it should.

[Charles Ofria @CharlesOfria]

@TedPavlic For student first authors, I have them write the first draft and then interactively edit with them, explaining my logic for changes as we go. Often I will leave writing sessions with a task list for them involving bigger changes. By the ~third paper this all goes pretty smoothly.

[Charles Ofria @CharlesOfria]

@seanmcarroll Use it as an instructional tool. Specifically, provide a prompt for them to use for ChatGPT. They must critique the response it gives, pointing out errors, lost nuance, missing details, or other issues they may find. You can test out some prompts to see what it struggles with.

[Matthew A Moreno @MorenoMatthewA]

Biomolecules’ structures have an intuitive relationship to their specific Physical Thing They Do… like the photopsin light receptors likely streaming this tweet to your brain…

((thread on investigation of evolutionary properties of in silico tag matching mechanisms))

[Charles Ofria @CharlesOfria]

@TanushJagdish I think this is key. The initial meeting between a student and a prospective committee member should be to decide if it makes sense for them to be on your committee, not just to convince them to do it. If you already know each other, then a meeting might not be needed.

[Charles Ofria @CharlesOfria]

@DrMikeWiser I would say Cleric to Draxis (https://t.co/5ys8aPeVk7), but he's Lawful Neutral and I see you heading in a more Lawful Good direction...

[Charles Ofria @CharlesOfria]

@lefticus I often use Emscripten, and while it’s been a while since I tested it, as of a few years ago there was a big difference in performance.

[Charles Ofria @CharlesOfria]

@LuisZaman I mean, it does also work really well for guiding them on how to improve their own writing...

[Charles Ofria @CharlesOfria]

@TedPavlic Great. I'm generally against remakes, but now I really want this movie.

[Charles Ofria @CharlesOfria]

@DrMikeWiser Just finished season 3 (about 20 minutes ago) and find myself satisfied with the series as a whole, though definitely some flaws. The reemphasis of the borg queen being one of them.

[Charles Ofria @CharlesOfria]

Jose was co-advised by @amlalejini and myself, and his dissertation title is "Beyond Benchmark Suites: Engineering Diagnostics Tools to Characterize Selection Schemes". We're really going to miss having him around, but excited to see what he does next.

[Charles Ofria @CharlesOfria]

Congratulations to *Dr.* Jose Hernandez (@jgh9094) who just did an amazing job with his PhD defense. We get to keep him for a couple more months as he finished up a couple of manuscripts, and then he's off to @moorejh's lab as a postdoctoral researcher. Nicely done Jose!

[Benjamin Kerr @evokerr]

This preprint is the fruit of several years of hard work by @peterlconlin & Heather Goldsby in collaboration with @CharlesOfria (who, w/ Heather, built the platform), @wc_ratcliff, @SFI_elibby, & Kate Skocelas- a truly wonderful higher-level unit! (14/14)
https://t.co/llz6DH9upM