ABOUT
I am an Assistant Professor in the Computational Intelligence Group at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. I received my Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the Eindhoven University of Technology. I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Neuroscience-inspired AI at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). Previously, I worked in the Department of Biomedical Informatics in Columbia University as a researcher.
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In my research, broadly, I am interested in evolutionary and collective Intelligence. In particular, evolutionary, individual and social learning, neuroscience-inspired AI and cumulative cultural evolution.
Vacancies: ​
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Master and bachelor projects available here. Feel free contact if you have any questions.​
NEWS
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Oct 2025: New preprint: Semantic knowledge guides innovation and drives cultural evolution.
by Anil Yaman, Shen Tian, and Björn Lindström. See here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.12837
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May 2025: Paper accepted at GECCO'25 - A Perturbation and Speciation-Based Algorithm for Dynamic Optimization Uninformed of Change (Signorelli, F., & Yaman, A).
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April 2024: Bast paper award! Hall, O. and Yaman, A. Collaborative Interactive Evolution of Art in the Latent Space of Deep Generative Models. EvoMUSART 2024. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56992-0_13
(see the blog post)
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Nov 2023: Corinna Triebold receives the Amsterdam AI Thesis award with her Bachelor thesis: Enhancing generalizability of evolved neural network controllers (Also presented at GECCO'24 [link], and Arxiv version here: [link])
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Oct 2023: New article: The emergence of division of labour through decentralized social sanctioning (Proceedings of the Royal Society B)
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Sep 2023: Come and interact with the Fungal Faculty on the ground floor of VU Amsterdam!
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Sep 2023: New preprint! Triebold, C., Yaman, A. (2023). Evolving generalist controllers to handle a wide range of morphological variations.
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Apr 2022: Seminar talk on meta-control of social learning strategies, available online at: https://youtu.be/x8Ezsy3_NVg