Community Resources

Teaching Artificial Life — a resource collection

A curated set of references, tools, courses, and interactive explorables for anyone teaching or learning about Artificial Life. This page is a living collection — contributions welcome.

01

Organizations & reference

Wiki
ALife Wiki
The community-maintained wiki for Artificial Life — covering key concepts, historical context, research areas, and links to seminal papers. A good starting point for anyone new to the field.
Visit wiki ↗
Code
ISAL GitHub
This repository is for lecture slides, exercises, assessments, exam questions for teachers and students of Artificial Life.
View repositories ↗
Newsletter
ALife Newsletter
A community newsletter covering recent developments, research highlights, and events in the Artificial Life community.
Read newsletter ↗
Society
ISAL — International Society for Artificial Life
The primary professional society for Artificial Life researchers. ISAL organizes the annual ALIFE conference, publishes the Artificial Life journal, and supports the global ALife research community.
Visit ISAL ↗
Conference
ALIFE 2026
The next annual ALIFE conference — August 17–21, 2026 in Waterloo, Canada. Held jointly with the AMMCS Congress at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Waterloo.
Visit 2026.alife.org ↗
02

Courses & curricula

Online courses, syllabi, and structured learning materials related to Artificial Life. If you teach an ALife course and want it listed here, reach out via the community Discord.

CS 361: Artificial Life — Carleton College (Anya Vostinar)
Spring 2025 course schedule covering evolutionary dynamics, digital evolution, and artificial ecology.
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Artificial Life — High School Course (Q. Tyrell Davis)
A high school introduction to Artificial Life covering cellular automata, evolutionary algorithms, and emergent behavior.
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03

Explorables & interactives

Interactive simulations, explorable explanations, and browser-based tools that illustrate ALife concepts — useful for teaching, demos, and self-directed learning. Coming soon.

04

Schools & labs

Universities, research labs, and groups with active programs or significant work in Artificial Life. If your lab or institution should be listed here, let us know via the community Discord. Coming soon.

05

ALife overview & introductions

High-level overviews of Artificial Life as a field — what it studies, why it matters, and how it connects to biology, computer science, philosophy, and education.

This section will feature introductory content produced by Imy, along with other community-contributed overview materials. Content is being developed alongside the AEDU and TAL workshops and will be added here as it becomes available.

Overview
What is Artificial Life?
A high-level introduction to ALife as a research discipline — its origins, core questions, and relationship to biology and computation.
Content forthcoming
Overview
Why Teach ALife?
The pedagogical case for including Artificial Life in undergraduate and graduate education — what it offers that other subjects don't.
Content forthcoming
Overview
Key Concepts & Vocabulary
A reference guide to fundamental ALife terminology — emergence, self-organization, autopoiesis, open-ended evolution, and more.
Content forthcoming
Overview
ALife Research Landscape
A map of current research areas in Artificial Life — from soft and hard ALife to wet ALife, digital evolution, and the study of the origins of life.
Content forthcoming