David E. Goldberg

Goldberg earned a Bachelor of Science (BSE) in Civil Engineering in 1975, a Master of Science (MSE) in 1976, and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering in 1983, all from the University of Michigan. His advisors were E. Benjamin Wylie and John Henry Holland. His students including Kalyanmoy Deb, Jeff Horn, and Hillol Kargupta. == Career ==

Goldberg began his professional career at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in 1975, working on modeling unsteady flows in open-channel networks. From 1976 to 1980, he worked at Stoner Associates, Inc. in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, initially as an engineer and later as a marketing manager, contributing to fluid flow simulation software development. In 1984, Goldberg joined the University of Alabama as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering Mechanics. He became an Associate Professor with tenure before leaving in 1990. While at Alabama, he received the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1985—the first in the university’s history—and authored the influential book Genetic Algorithms in Search, Optimization, and Machine Learning. At Alabama, he supervised the doctoral work of Kalyanmoy Deb, who would become a leading figure in evolutionary multi-objective optimization. In 1990, Goldberg joined the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he became a professor in the department then known as General Engineering (GE) renamed the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering in 2006 and director of the Illinois Genetic Algorithms Laboratory (IlliGAL). In 2003 he was appointed as the first holder of the Jerry S. Dobrovolny Professorship in Entrepreneurial Engineering. He is also a co-founder of ShareThis and, in 2007, co-founded the Illinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering Education (iFoundry) at the University of Illinois. In 2007, Goldberg co-founded and co-chaired the first Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering (WPE), which aimed to explore the conceptual foundations of engineering practice. He co-edited the resulting publication, Philosophy and Engineering: An Emerging Agenda (Springer, 2010). The workshop was later reorganized as the Forum on Philosophy, Engineering, and Technology (fPET) in 2010; Goldberg and Diane Michelfelder, former provost of Macalester College, co-chaired its steering committee through 2024, while individual conferences were chaired by designated conference chairs. He also co-edited Philosophy and Engineering: Reflections on Practice, Principles, and Process (Springer, 2013). Goldberg is a registered professional engineer in Pennsylvania, holding license number PE029588E since 1980. From 2010 to 2013, Goldberg served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS), where he worked with Dean Chan Eng Soon on developing a design-centric engineering curriculum. In 2011, he received a certificate in Leadership Coaching from Georgetown University. He was named a Distinguished Academic Partner of Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering from 2012 to 2014. Goldberg was recognized as an IEEE Pioneer in Evolutionary Computation in 2010 and won the Wickenden Award from the American Society for Engineering Education in 1997 for his 1996 paper on engineering education. == Research and scholarly works ==

Goldberg is known for his contributions to genetic algorithms (GAs) and evolutionary computation, particularly in the areas of selection schemes, allele representation, and multi-objective optimization. His influential papers include A Niched Pareto Genetic Algorithm for Multiobjective Optimization (Horn, Nafpliotis, & Goldberg, 1994), A Comparative Analysis of Selection Schemes Used in Genetic Algorithms (Goldberg & Deb, 1991), Genetic Algorithms with Sharing for Multimodal Function Optimization, Alleles, Loci and the Traveling Salesman Problem (Goldberg & Lingle, 1985), and Messy Genetic Algorithms: Motivation, Analysis, and First Results (Goldberg, Korb, & Deb, 1989). His 1989 book, Genetic Algorithms in Search, Optimization, and Machine Learning, has been translated into multiple languages and is widely cited in the field. In addition to his technical research, Goldberg has contributed to the philosophy of engineering, co-founding and co-chairing the first Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering (WPE) in 2007, which later evolved into the Forum on Philosophy, Engineering, and Technology (fPET). Goldberg has identified Design of Innovation: Lessons from and for Competent Genetic Algorithms (Kluwer, 2002) as his most important synthesis of his work on genetic algorithms, presenting GAs as a model of recombinative innovation and introducing compact analytical models that show how population sizing, population takeover, and recombinative effectiveness interact to solve boundedly difficult problems. Post-Genetic Algorithms Career Following his work in genetic algorithms, Goldberg shifted focus toward engineering education and leadership development. In 2010, he completed leadership coaching training at Georgetown University and resigned his tenured professorship to found ThreeJoy Associates, an organization dedicated to transforming engineering education. He followed this with A Field Manual for a Whole New Education (2023), which introduces the 4 Sprints and Spirits Method (4SSM), a practical framework for implementing rapid curricular and cultural change in higher education. Goldberg hosted the podcast Big Beacon Radio from 2015 to 2018, focused on engineering education and innovation. Notable students Goldberg has supervised numerous graduate students, several of whom have gone on to influential careers in academia and industry. Notable students include Kalyanmoy Deb, a leading researcher in evolutionary computation; Hillol Kargupta, a computer scientist; Charles L. Karr, former dean of engineering at the University of Alabama and current president of the University of Alabama in Huntsville; and Georges Harik, an early employee at Google and computer scientist. == Awards and honors ==

• NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, 1985 • Distinguished Academic Partner, Olin College of Engineering, 2012–2014 == Publications ==

Genetic Algorithms Publications • • • • Educational-Philosophical Non-Book Works • • • • • == References ==