9632660 Gelenbe After a forty to fifty year cycle, the dramatic evolution of this technology is enabling a return to the fundamental biological paradigms which inspired the early intellectual of information technology such as John von Neumann, Stephen Kleene and Marvin Minsky. As an example, artificial neural networks resulted from the early models of McCulloch and Pitts concerning biological neurons. Their mathematical theory was developed by engineers, mathematicians and physicists, and a very broad variety of significant applications have resulted from this work. Now psychologists have adopted them as mechanistic models of human and animal thought processes, and are contributing to the theory of how these models simulate and elucidate learning. Similarly, concepts from genetics are modifying the manner in which computer algorithms are being developed, while algorithmic and information theoretic concepts (and neural networks) have become tools for research in genetics. The purpose of this workshop is to broaden and pursue this long-term and fruitful interaction of Engineering with the Life and Human Sciences, by investigation the processes which provide Systems, both Artificial and Natural, with Autonomous and Adaptive Behavior. The workshop will call upon prominent researchers who study examples of autonomous behavior such as the food chain, food ingestion, and animal psychology. The workshop will also call upon researchers who take a Systems Engineering or Mathematical/Physical science approach to artificial autonomous behavior such as self-organizing hardware, genetic algorithms, neural networks, approximate reasoning and robotics. The encounter between these two lines of thought in the presence of high-quality and energetic audience - as well as a number of industrially relevant "real" problems areas-will lead to a better understanding of the state of the art, to new modeling efforts, and to the exchange of paradigms between these two impor tant areas. Participation of young faculty members and post-docs, as well as women and minorities will be emphasized. ***
