Bird-of-a-feather Workshop OnApplication of Hybrid Evolutionary Algorithms to |
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Important Dates Submission Deadline March 10, 2003 Notification of Acceptance March 19, 2003 Camera Ready Due April 4, 2003 Workshop in Chicago July 12, 2003 |
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1. Description of the Workshop
This workshop will focus on the application of hybrid Evolutionary Computation (EC) techniques to NP-complete problems. There are many examples of problems belonging to this class, such as the boolean satisfiability (SAT), clique, decision trees, graph partitioning or Hamiltonian circuits. Moreover, optimization problems belonging to the NP-hard complexity class, such as the traveling salesperson or bin packing can easily be restated in terms of a decision version. As an example, the optimization question "What is the shortest tour?" which is NP-hard, can be restated as the NP-complete decision problem "Is there a tour length less than K?".
When applied to this class of problems, evolutionary techniques can benefit from hybridizing with problem-specific algorithms. In the past few years, results obtained by several investigations give a clear indication that the joint application of stochastic optimization algorithms and classical methods might improve the efficiency of search. Adopting several current approaches as a starting point, this workshop aims to promote a widespread discussion about this topic and, most important, to analyze if it is possible to develop new hybrid architectures that perform better than today's methods.
2. Topics of Interest
The workshop considers hybridization in a general sense. Topics of interest include, but are not restricted to:
- Hybridization with exact techniques, such as the branch and bound, dynamic programming or linear programming.
- Hybridization with approximation algorithms, i.e., methods that provide a guarantee on the quality of the solutions obtained.
- Using EC algorithms inside exact techniques.
- Analysis of the strengths (and weaknesses) of today's EC-based approaches. Studies of how they compare to other techniques that are also applied in these problems.
3. Interest for the Evolutionary Computation Community
This workshop could be important, both to analyze the reasons behind the strength of current hybrid EC techniques when applied to NP-complete problems, and also to identify promising research areas. Also, the workshop could be valuable for people in search for concrete approaches that solve practical situations, given that a significant amount of NP-complete problems have real world application.
4. Schedule
The schedule of EvoHybrid is as follows:
14.00: Introduction by the workshop organizers
14.15:Invited talk by G. Raidl from Vienna University of Technology, Austria.
15.15: Combination of Guided Local Search and Estimation of Distribution Algorithm for Quadratic Assignment - Q. Zhang et al.
15.45: Coffee Break
16.00: A Hybrid Evolutionary Algorithm for the Rectilinear Steiner Problem - B. Julstrom
16.30: An Hierarchic Genetic Algorithm for Computing (near) Optimal Euclidean Steiner Trees - J. Barreiros
17.00: Panel Discussion
18.00: End of the Workshop
5. Workshop Organizers
Francisco B. Pereira ¹ ² (xico@dei.uc.pt) [contact organizer]
Ernesto Costa ¹ (ernesto@dei.uc.pt)
Günther Raidl ³ (raidl@ads.tuwien.ac.at) Addresses:
Centro de Informatica e Sistemas da Universidade de Coimbra ¹
Departamento de Engenharia Informatica
Universidade de Coimbra
Polo II, 3030 Coimbra
Portugal
Phone: +351 239790000
Fax: +351 239701266
Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Coimbra ²
Rua Pedro Nunes - Quinta da Nora
3030-199 Coimbra
Portugal
Phone: +351 239790200
Fax: +351 239790201
Institute of Computer Graphics and Algorithms ³
Vienna University of Technology
Vienna, Austria
Phone: + 43 (1)58801-18616
Fax: +43 (1)58801-18699
6. Program Committee
David Corne, University of Reading, UK.
Carlos Cotta, University of Malaga, Spain.
Jens Gottlieb, SAP AG, Germany.
Jin-Kao Hao, University of Angers, France.
Bryant Julstrom, St. Cloud State University, USA.
Kay Chen Tan, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Elena Marchiori, Free University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Thomas Stutzle, Technical University, Darmstadt, Germany.
7. Contacts
If you have any question, contact Francisco B. Pereira.General information about GECCO 2003 workshops, please contact Alwyn Barry.
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