Ramiro Barrantes-Reynolds

Bio [2007]
I was born and raised in San José, Costa Rica and earned a double major in computer science and mathematics at the University of Costa Rica. During that time, I became interested in Stephen Wolfram's work while taking a numerical analysis class that used Mathematica. In 2001 I moved to Vermont and started to work as a bioinformatics programmer at the University of Vermont. I am now a first year graduate student in the Cell and Molecular Biology program at the University of Vermont.

Project Title
Dancing Turing Machines

Project
The goal of this project was to find Turing machines that can reproduce the movements of known dances (i.e "Turning machines!"). I started with a basic NKS study of 2D Turing machines, and tried to find ones with complicated and interesting patterns. I then developed multiheaded Turing machines (several dancers on the same dance floor). We also investigated how to train the Turing machines to move in a similar fashion.

Results of the conducted experiments have shown that it is possible to have Turing machines that move together on the same tape, that there are many Turing machines with interesting patterns, and that those patterns can change considerably when you have them share the same tape.

Favorite Outer Totalistic 3-Color Rule
Rule chosen: 13104574

I like the rule 13104574. One of the things I like about it is how at the beginning these white stripes go down on the triangular (Christmas-tree like) structures, before they disappear and everything turns into randomness.