AIC Seminar Series

"Create" means "to produce by imaginative skill" and "creativity" means "the ability to create." [Webster dictionary] However, within computer science any concept needs to be formalized and it is hard to formalize "creativity." As a result different problems are addressed within the computational creativity area in different periods of time. In this talk we will try to delineate three generations of research within this field by citing examples and draw the lessons learnt in these generations. We will also provide a broad overview of the background of the work and point to some directions where computational creativity may lead to. If we accept dynamically transforming existing ontology to the new ones in producing the "eureka" as a creative activity, then some relatively new branches of mathematics may be of help. We will discuss this direction in the talk.

Debasis Mitra is a faculty member at the Florida Institute of Technology. He is a Ph.D. in Physics (Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur) and in Computer Science (Center For Advanced Computer Studies, University of Louisiana). Debasis' work has been initiated by a CAREER award from the NSF. His current projects are on studying creativity using constraint-based knowledge representation (supported by NSF), and on developing algorithms for detecting radioactive contraband using cosmic ray (supported by Department of Homeland Security). Dr. Mitra is also interested in Bio-informatics. In the past he has worked on Mathematical Physics, and has industrial experience in seismic exploration.