Tom Ray

Tom Ray is a Professor of Biology and Computer Science at the University of Oklahoma, currently based in Norman, Oklahoma. He previously served on the faculty at the University of Delaware from 1981 to 1998, following his undergraduate studies at Florida State University and doctoral work in tropical plant ecology at Harvard University. Between 1991 and 1992, Ray developed the Tierra artificial life platform, a pioneering computational software system designed for studying digital evolution and self-replicating code. His extensive academic career also includes a decade as External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute from 1993 to 2003, alongside a concurrent five-year appointment as an Invited Researcher at the ATR Human Information Processing Labs in Japan. As an elected AAAS Fellow, he currently maintains a multidisciplinary focus bridging computational biology, complex systems research, and evolutionary ecology.