I mean please don't take this answer the wrong way, but this is like saying "Some rich person should give away $1M for finding an application of complex numbers

I mean please don't take this answer the wrong way, but this is like saying "Some rich person should give away $1M for finding an application of complex numbers". It feels condescending. If your area deals with cellular automata e.g. programming languages, computer simulation, procedural generation etc applications of cellular automata are numerous and well understood. It's niche sure, but it's not like this entertaining thing that strangely has no practical applications. I downvoted GP because of this, since it assumes it has no applications and offers a rich person to help us out to compensate for that.