Curriculum Vitae

Jacob Schrum, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Computer Science
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Southwestern University
1001 E. University Ave.
Georgetown, TX 78626

Office/Mail: Fondren-Jones Science Hall 308
Off-Campus Phone: (512) 863-1712
On-Campus Extension: x1712
E-mail: schrum2@southwestern.edu

I'm an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Southwestern University. I've been a member of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science since 2014. Incidentally, Southwestern University is also where I received my undergraduate B.S. with a triple-major in Computer Science, Math, and German. I received my Masters and Ph.D. from the Computer Science Department at the University of Texas at Austin.

Classes Taught and Online Instructional Videos

Instructional videos associated with my classes are hosted on this YouTube channel.

Research Movies and Images

Individual videos associated with my research are linked to below, but are all hosted on this YouTube channel. More details about my research are available in my publications, also linked to below:

Research

My research area is Artificial Intelligence, specifically the use of evolutionary computation and generative AI to discover novel content and designs. I'm especially interested in applying AI to games. A particular type of evolutionary computation I like to apply is Quality Diversity algorithms, which attempt to find a wide array of diverse solutions to a given problem.

My dissertation advisor was Risto Miikkulainen of the Neural Networks Research Group (NNRG). Information about my research activities at the University of Texas is available on my Personal Page within the larger NNRG website.

My research has led to the development of several software packages:
  • Modular Multiobjective (Hyper) NEAT (MM-NEAT) is a software framework I developed in Java for evolving multimodal behavior in Ms. Pac-Man. It is an extension of the popular Neuro-Evolution of Augmenting Topologies algorithm. However, this repository is now much more than a mere extension of NEAT. It is a collection of various tools that can be used for evolution and machine learning in various domains. Support for HyperNEAT was added by Lauren Gillespie, the ability to evolve agents in Tetris was added by Gabriela Gonzalez, several multi-agent predator/prey scenarios were added by Alex Rollins, interactive art evolution code was worked on by Lauren Gillespie and Isabel Tweraser, integration with Unreal Tournament 2004 was done by Adina Friedman, a simplified dungeon crawling game reminiscent of Zelda was added by Jake Gutierrez, integration with Mega Man Maker was added by Benjamin Capps, Lode Runner was added by Kirby Steckel, and code related to Minecraft was introduced by Mark Mueller, Melanie Richey, and Alejandro Medina. You can track the most recent updates on GitHub.
  • A lot of work in MM-NEAT has focused on Procedural Content Generation for Games using Generative Adversarial Networks. This subset of MM-NEAT code is available in the GameGAN repository. It showcases work in Mario, Zelda, Mega Man, and Lode Runner, and is based on contributions by former research students Benjaman Capps, Jake Gutierrez, and Kirby Steckel, as well as work by external collaborators from around the world.
  • Another project derived from MM-NEAT is Quantum Zentanglement by undergraduate students Sarah Friday and Anna Krolikowski. The system evolves images, and then combines them in a way inspired by Zentangle art. Many examples are available here.
  • The Zentangle repo was actually a spin-off of a more general art platform for CPPN-based Art Evolution. This system was made by undergraduate students Lauren Gillespie and Isabel Tweraser. At its core, it is a reimplementation of the now defunct Picbreeder platform for evolving images with Compositional Pattern Producing Networks. However, it supports many more types of interactive evolution: voxel-based 3D shapes (like the now defunct Endless Forms site), soundwaves (similar to Breedesizer), as well as 2D and 3D animations, which was an original contribution by Isabel and Lauren associated with their research.
  • The EvoCraft SCOPE repo allows for interactive evolution of interesting and novel shapes in Minecraft using the EvoCraft API. Work in Minecraft has also been conducted in MM-NEAT to evolve flying machines using Quality Diversity. This research was initially conducted by Alejandro Medina, Melanie Richey, and Mark Mueller. Additional contributions were later made by Joanna Lewis and Travis Rafferty. Movies and other information related to research in Minecraft are available here.
  • UT^2 is a software agent for Unreal Tournament 2004 that won the 2012 BotPrize competition, a Turing Test for video game bots. The agent depends on the Pogamut platform, which is Java middleware that interfaces with Unreal Tournament 2004 via the included GameBots mod. Information about my past BotPrize research is compiled on this page. Note that this code and other code associated with Unreal Tournament 2004 is now included in MM-NEAT as well, and additional research in Unreal Tournament 2004 was conducted by Adina Friedman.
  • The Infinite Art Gallery is a video game in which players interactively evolve art similar to that of Picbreeder and Endless Forms, but by interacting with the art in an immersive 3D world. The code for this project is available on GitHub. It was developed in C# and Unity by Bryan Hollingsworth.
  • Multi-Brain HyperNEAT is an extension of HyperNEAT, an approach for evolving indirectly encoded neural networks. Multi-Brain HyperNEAT allows individual agents to have multiple separate brains to use in different circumstances. The code is an extension of the Multiagent Simulator for HyperSharpNEAT.
  • BREVE Monsters is a 3D Artificial Life environment with several domains in which I evolved multimodal behavior. This code relies on the Breve simulation environment, which has unfortunately been discontinued.
Most of the research I conduct at Southwestern University involves undergraduate coauthors who have been supported by undergraduate research funding. The name of the program behind this funding has changed over the years, but details on my previous summer research students is available here.

Dissertation


Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles


Peer-Reviewed Conference Publications


Invited Book Chapters/Articles


Extended Abstracts


Technical Reports


Dagstuhl Reports


Undergraduate Poster Presentations Supervised


Miscellaneous


Last Updated: 3/22/2025