We seek both to understand these natural processes and to apply their organizing principles in computation. The adaptive computation group at UNM has a special interest in interactions between biology and computation. We believe that modern computer systems have many properties in common with living systems and should be engineered accordingly. Thus, we emphasize concrete implementations of our ideas, building real systems, and solving real computer systems problems. Modeling projects in the group range from abstract "artificial-life" style models that capture qualitative properties to much more detailed models based on real data that make quantitative predictions. The group has close ties with UNM's Biology Department and the Santa Fe Institute.