Advances in artificial immune systems

During the last decade, the field of artificial immune system (A1S) is progressing slowly and steadily as a branch of computational intelligence (CI). There has been increasing interest in the development of computational models inspired by several immunological principles. In particular, some are building models mimicking the mechanisms in the biological immune system (BIS) to better understand its natural processes and simulate its dynamical behavior in the presence of antigens/pathogens. Most of the AIS models, however, emphasize designing artifacts - computational algorithms, techniques using simplified models of various immunological processes and functionalities. Like other biologically-inspired techniques, such as artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms, and cellular automata, AISs also try to extract ideas from the BIS in order to develop computational tools for solving science and engineering problems. Although still relatively young, the artificial immune system (AIS) is emerging as an active and attractive, field involving models, techniques and applications of greater diversity