About

James Wilson

Hello. I'm a software developer with a background in cognitive science (BSc) and developmental robotics (PhD). My research years were spent on biologically-inspired learning and evolutionary systems — getting machines to acquire structure the way an organism does, rather than having that structure designed in by hand.

Since leaving research I've spent most of my time on web development. The combination suits me: I get to write about things I find interesting, package what I learn into small applications, and pick up enough new technologies to never be bored. Most of what shows up on this site falls into one of those buckets.

What's on this site

Projects — small interactive things I've built and put online. Fractal Explorer and Crazy Bar are the two demos that survived an old archive of this site; both have been rebuilt from scratch in modern TypeScript on top of the original UI contract.

Interests

• Artificial intelligence, especially biologically-inspired learning systems
• Evolutionary algorithms and developmental approaches to robot control
• Clever algorithms in general, and visualising them
• Web development as a way to share all of the above

Background

• BSc Cognitive Science
• PhD Developmental Robotics
• Software developer (web, since ~2013)

This site was originally built around 2013 (early static version) and ran as a single-page app from approximately 2014 onwards. The 2018 version was lost when the project list and blog feeds (projects.json, posts.json) failed to be archived. What you see here was rebuilt in 2026 from the surviving Wayback snapshot: the bio above and the two interactive demos.