General Chair
Editor-in-Chief
Local Chair
Proceedings Chair
Publicity Chair
Publicity Chair
Student Affairs Chair
Student Affairs Chair
Electronic Media Chair
Event Chairs
Tutorials
Workshops
Workshops
Competitions
Evolutionary Computation in Practice
Evolutionary Computation in Practice
Hot off the Press
Late Breaking Abstracts
Humies
Humies
Humies
Summer School
Summer School
Summer School
Women@GECCO
Women@GECCO
Job Market
Job Market
Business Committee
Business Committee
Business Committee
Organizer Biographies
Carlos Artemio Coello Coello, General Chair
Carlos Artemio Coello received a BSc in Civil Engineering from the Universidad Autonoma de Chiapas in Mexico in 1991 (graduating Summa Cum Laude). Then, he was awarded a scholarship from the Mexican government to pursue graduate studies in Computer Science at Tulane University (in the USA). He received a MSc and a PhD in Computer Science in 1993 and 1996, respectively. Dr. Coello has been a Senior Research Fellow in the Plymouth Engineering Design Centre (in England) and a Visiting Professor at DePauw University (in the USA). He is currently full professor at CINVESTAV-IPN in Mexico City, Mexico. He has published over 390 papers in international peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, and conferences. He has also co-authored the book "Evolutionary Algorithms for Solving Multi-Objective Problems", which is now in its Second Edition (Springer, 2007) and has co-edited the book "Applications of Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithms" (World Scientific, 2004). His publications currently report over 23,600 citations, according to Google Scholar (his h-index is 61). He has delivered invited talks, keynote speeches and tutorials at international conferences held in Spain, USA, Canada, Switzerland, UK, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, China, India, Uruguay and Mexico. Dr. Coello has served as a technical reviewer for over 50 international journals and for more than 100 international conferences and actually serves as associate editor of the journals "Evolutionary Computation", "IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation", "Computational Optimization and Applications", "Applied Soft Computing", and "Pattern Analysis and Applications". He is also a member of the editorial board of "Engineering Optimization". He received the 2007 National Research Award (granted by the Mexican Academy of Science) in the area of "exact sciences" and, since January 2011, he is an IEEE Fellow for "contributions to multi-objective optimization and constraint-handling techniques." He is also the recipient of the prestigious "2013 IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award" and of the "2012 National Medal of Science and Arts" in the area of "Physical, Mathematical and Natural Sciences" (this is the highest award that a scientist can receive in Mexico). His current research interests are: evolutionary multiobjective optimization and constraint-handling techniques for evolutionary algorithms.
Jose A Lozano, Editor-in-Chief
Prof. Lozano graduated in Mathematics (1991) and Computer Science (1992) at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) (Spain). In 1998 he got his PhD degree from the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, where he was awarded with the extraordinary prize for the best thesis in engineering. He got an assistant professor position at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) in 1993 and became a full professor at the Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence in 2008.
Since 2005 he leads the Intelligent Systems Group (ISG) based in the Computer Science School (UPV/EHU). His research areas are evolutionary computation, machine learning and probabilistic graphical models and its application in the solution of real problems in biomedicine, industry or finance. He has published 4 books, more tan 100 scientific ISI journal articles and about 150 contributions to national and international conferences. These publications have received more than 8600 citations. Prof. Lozano is associate editor of IEEE Trans. on Evolutionary Computation and IEEE Trans. on Neural Network and Learning Systems among other prestigious journals.
Arturo Hernández Aguirre, Local Chair
Josu Ceberio Uribe, Proceedings Chair
Josu Ceberio received the bachelor degree in Computer Sciece from the University of the Basque Country in 2007, and two years later he took his masters degree in Computer Science from the same university. Since 2010, he has been member of the Intelligent Systems Group where he obtained, in 2014, the PhD in Computer Science. Since 2014, he is lecturer at the University of the Basque Country, and currently, he is affiliated to the department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Faculty of Computer Science. He has co-authored more than 30 scientific publications in different journals and international conferences covering topics such as permutation-based combinatorial optimization problems, estimation of distribution algorithms, multi-objectivisation, elementary landscape decomposition and parameterized instance complexity.
Mario Garza Fabre, Publicity Chair
Gregorio Toscano Pulido, Publicity Chair
Katya Rodríguez-Vázquez, Student Affairs Chair
Elizabeth Wanner, Student Affairs Chair
I am a Lecturer in Computer Science, Aston University, Birmingham, UK since 2017. Previously, I was an Associate Professor at the CEFET-MG in the Department of Computer Engineering, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. I obtained my Ph.D. at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, on the topic of Local Search operators for Genetic Algorithms based on derivative-free quadratic approximation. I also hold an MSc in Mathematics from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, and before that, I received a BSc degree in Mathematics at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.
My research is concerned with population-based multiobjective optimization and matheuristics, experimental assessment of algorithms, dynamical systems, engineering design optimization and mathematical and statistical aspects of optimization theory. My work is concerned with both abstract problems as well as applied ones.
Nadarajen Veerapen, Electronic Media Chair
Nadarajen Veerapen is an Associate Professor (maître de conférences) at the University of Lille, France. Previously he was a research fellow at the University of Stirling in Scotland. He holds a PhD in Computing Science from the University of Angers, France, where he worked on adaptive operator selection. His research interests include local search, hybrid methods, search-based software engineering and visualisation. He is the Electronic Media Chair for GECCO 2020 and has served as Publicity Chair for GECCO 2019 and as Student Affairs Chair for GECCO 2017 and 2018. He has previously co-organised the workshop on Landscape-Aware Heuristic Search at PPSN 2016, GECCO 2017-2019.
Event Chairs
Efrén Mezura Montes, Tutorials
Dr. Efrén Mezura-Montes is a full-time researcher at the Artificial Intelligence Research Center, University of Veracruz, MEXICO. His research interests are the design, analysis and application of bio-inspired algorithms to solve complex optimization problems. He has published over 145 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. He also has one edited book and over 11 book chapters published by international publishing companies. From his work, Google Scholar reports over 5,790 citations.
He is a member of the editorial board of the journals: “Swarm and Evolutionary Computation”, “Complex & Intelligent Systems”, “International Journal of Dynamics and Control” and the “Journal of Optimization”. He is a former member of the editorial board of the journals “Computational Optimization and Applications” and “Soft Computing”. He has also been a reviewer for more than 20 international specialized journals, including the Evolutionary Computation Journal, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation and the IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics.
Richard Allmendinger, Workshops
Richard is Business Engagement Lead of Alliance Manchester Business School and Lecturer in Data Science at The University of Manchester. Prior to Manchester, he worked at the Biochemical Engineering Department, University College London. He studied Business Engineering at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and completed a PhD in Computer Science at The University of Manchester.
Richard's research interests are in the field of data science and in particular in the development and application of optimization, learning and analytics techniques to real-world problems arising in areas such as healthcare, manufacturing, sports, music, economics, and forensics. Much of his research has been funded by grants from Innovate UK, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and industrial partners.
Richard is the Co-Founder of the IEEE CIS Task Force on Optimization Methods in Bioinformatics and Bioengineering, a Member of the IEEE CIS Bioinformatics and Bioengineering Technical Committee, the General Chair of the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, and a Member of the Editorial Board of the Applied Soft Computing journal.
Hugo Terashima Marín, Workshops
Hugo Terashima-Marín holds a BSc in Computational Systems from Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Monterrey in 1982; MSc in Computer Science from University of Oklahoma in 1987; MSc in Information Technology and Knowledge-based Systems from University of Edinburgh in 1994; and PhD in Informatics from Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Monterrey in 1998.
Dr. Terashima-Marin is a Full Professor at the School of Engineering and Sciences, Leader of the Research Group with Strategic focus in Intelligent Systems and Director of the Graduate Program in Computer Science. He is a member of the National System of Researchers, the Mexican Academy of Sciences, and the Mexican Academy of Computing. He participates as a member of the Technical and Academic Council for the Thematic Network of Applied Computational Intelligence supported by CONACyT. His research areas are computational intelligence, heuristics, metaheuristics and hyper-heuristics for combinatorial optimization, characterization of problems and algorithms, constraint handling and applications of artificial Intelligence. He has been principal investigator of various projects for industry and CONACyT. He has current collaboration with research groups in the University of Nottingham, the University of Edinburgh-Napier, and the University of Stirling in the UK, and University Andrés Bello in Santiago de Chile. He has published more than 70 research articles in international journals and conferences. He has supervised 5 PhD dissertations and 26 Master Thesis.
In the past, he has been Director of the MSC in Intelligent Systems, PhD in Artificial Intelligence, PhD in Information Technology and Communications, the PhD Programs, and Graduate Programs at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Monterrey.
Markus Wagner, Competitions
Markus Wagner is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Computer Science, University of Adelaide, Australia. He has done his PhD studies at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbruecken, Germany and at the University of Adelaide, Australia. For the outcomes of his studies, he has received the university's Doctoral Research Medal - the first for this school.
His research topics range from mathematical runtime analysis of heuristic optimisation algorithms and theory-guided algorithm design to applications of heuristic methods to renewable energy production, professional team cycling and software engineering. So far, he has been a program committee member 30 times, and he has written over 100 articles with over 100 different co-authors. He is on SIGEVO's Executive Board and serves as the first ever Sustainability Officer. He has contributed to GECCOs as Workshop Chair and Competition Chair, and he has chaired several education-related committees within the IEEE CIS.
Thomas Bartz-Beielstein, Evolutionary Computation in Practice
- Academic Background: Ph.D. (Dr. rer. nat.), TU Dortmund University, 2005, Computer Science.
- Professional Experience: Shareholder, Bartz & Bartz GmbH, Germany, 2014 – Present; Speaker, Research Center Computational Intelligence plus, Germany, 2012 – Present; Professor, Applied Mathematics, TH Köln, Germany, 2006 – Present.
- Professional Interest: Computational Intelligence; Simulation; Optimization; Statistical Analysis; Applied Mathematics.
- ACM Activities: Organizer of the GECCO Industrial Challenge, SIGEVO, 2011 – Present; Event Chair, Evolutionary Computation in Practice Track, SIGEVO, 2008 – Present; Tutorials Evolutionary Computation in Practice, SIGEVO, 2005 – 2013; GECCO Program Committee Member, Session Chair, SIGEVO, 2004 – Present.
- Membership and Offices in Related Organizations: Program Chair, International Conference Parallel Problem Solving from Nature, Jozef Stefan Institute, Slovenia, 2014; Program Chair, International Workshop on Hybrid Metaheuristics, TU Dortmund University, 2006; Member, Special Interest Group Computational Intelligence, VDI/VDE-Gesellschaft für Mess- und Automatisierungstechnik, 2008 – Present.
- Awards Received: Innovation Partner, State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, 2013; One of the top 20 researchers in applied science by the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Research of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, 2017.
Bogdan Filipic, Evolutionary Computation in Practice
Bogdan Filipic is a senior researcher and head of Computational Intelligence Group at the Department of Intelligent Systems of the Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia, and associate professor of Computer Science at the Jozef Stefan International Postgraduate School. He received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Ljubljana. His research interests are in stochastic optimization, evolutionary computation and intelligent data analysis. He focuses on evolutionary multiobjective optimization, including result visualization, constraint handling and use of surrogate models. He is also active in promoting evolutionary computation in practice and has led optimization projects for steel industry, car manufacturing and energy management. He co-chaired the biennial BIOMA conference from 2004 to 2012, and served as the general chair of PPSN 2014. He was a guest lecturer at the University of Oulu, Finland, and the VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and was giving tutorials at recent CEC and GECCO conferences.
Heike Trautmann, Hot off the Press
Heike Trautmann is Professor of Information Systems and Statistics at the University of Münster, Germany (https://www.wi.uni-muenster.de/department/groups/statistik/people/heike-trautmann). She graduated in Statistics and, after working in a consulting company for two years, received her PhD and Habilitation in Statistics / Multiobjective Optimization.
Her current research activities are focused on multiobjective (evolutionary) optimization - in particular preference incorporation, performance assessment and stopping criteria - as well as algorithm selection and benchmarking concepts. She was involved in organizing several related special sessions already, e.g. the "Joint Workshop on Automated Selection and Tuning of Algorithms" at Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN) in 2012 as well as the track "Multiobjective Optimization" at the Evolve Conferences in 2012 and 2014. Furthermore, she organized the 1st Workshop on COnfiguration and SElection of ALgorithms (COSEAL) in Münster in 2014 as well as the EMO track at GECCO 2015.
Ke Tang, Late Breaking Abstracts
John Koza, Humies
Erik Goodman, Humies
Erik Goodman is a Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, of Mechanical Engineering, and of Computer Science & Engineering at Michigan State University. He is Director of the BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action, an NSF Science and Technology Center funded at $25 million in 2010. He studied genetic algorithms under John Holland at the University of Michigan, before they had been named. His use of a genetic algorithm in 1971 to solve for 40 coefficients of a highly nonlinear model of a bacterial cell was the first known GA application on a real-world problem, and required nearly a year for one run on a dedicated computer. He has developed and used evolutionary algorithms ever since, including for parameterization of complex ecosystem models, for evolution of cooperative behavior in artificial life, for factory layout and scheduling, for protein folding and docking, for design of composite structures, and for data mining and pattern classification. His recent research has centered on sustainable evolutionary computation, design of mechatronic systems using genetic programming, and multi-objective evolutionary algorithms in support of multi-criterion decision making. He was co-founder and formerly VP Technology of Red Cedar Technology, which provides tools for automated engineering design based on evolutionary computation. He chaired ICGA-97 and GECCO-2001, chaired GECCO's sponsoring organization, ISGEC, from 2001-2004, and was the founding chair of ACM SIGEVO, 2005-2007.
William B. Langdon, Humies
William B. Langdon has been working on GP since 1993. His PhD was the first book to be published in John Koza and Dave Goldberg's book series. He has previously run the GP track for GECCO 2001 and was programme chair for GECCO 2002 having previously chaired EuroGP for 3 years. More recently he has edited SIGEVO's FOGA and run the computational intelligence on GPUs (CIGPU) and EvoPAR workshops. His books include A Field Guide to Genetic Programming, Foundations of Genetic Programming and Advances in Genetic Programming 3. He also maintains the genetic programming bibliography. His current research uses GP to genetically improve existing software, CUDA, search based software engineering and Bioinformatics.
Miguel Nicolau, Summer School
Miguel is a Lecturer in Business Analytics, in the School of Business of University College Dublin, Ireland. His research interests revolve around Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Evolutionary Computation, Business Analytics, Genetic Programming, and Real-World Applications. He is a senior member of the UCD's NCRA (Natural Computing Research & Applications) group.
Christine Zarges, Summer School
Christine Zarges received her degree and PhD from the TU Dortmund, Germany, in 2007 and 2011, respectively. Afterwards, she held a postdoctoral research position at the University of Warwick, England, UK, and a Birmingham Fellowship at the University of Birmingham, England, UK. She is a Lecturer at Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK, since August 2016.
Her research focuses on the theoretical analysis of all kinds of randomised search heuristics such as evolutionary algorithms and artificial immune systems with the aim to understand their working principles and guide their design and application. She is also interested in computational and theoretical aspects of natural processes and systems. She has given tutorials on "Artificial Immune Systems for Optimisation" at previous GECCOs and was co-chair of the Artificial Immune Systems track at GECCO 2014, the Artificial Immune Systems and Artificial Chemistries track at GECCO 2015 and Hot off the Press chair at GECCO 2017. She is member of the editorial board of Evolutionary Computation (MIT Press) and was co-organiser of FOGA 2015 and co-workshop chair at PPSN 2016 and 2018. She is a Management Committee member for the UK and working group leader in COST Action CA15140 (Improving Applicability of Nature-Inspired Optimisation by Joining Theory and Practice).
Vanessa Volz, Summer School
Vanessa Volz is an AI researcher at modl.ai (Copenhagen, Denmark), with focus in computational intelligence in games. She received her PhD in 2019 from TU Dortmund University, Germany, for her work on surrogate-assisted evolutionary algorithms applied to game optimisation. She holds B.Sc. degrees in Information Systems and in Computer Science from WWU Münster, Germany. She received an M.Sc. with distinction in Advanced Computing: Machine Learning, Data Mining and High Performance Computing from University of Bristol, UK, in 2014. Her current research focus is on employing surrogate-assisted evolutionary algorithms to obtain balance and robustness in systems with interacting human and artificial agents, especially in the context of games.
Leslie Pérez Cáceres, Women@GECCO
Elizabeth Wanner, Women@GECCO
I am a Lecturer in Computer Science, Aston University, Birmingham, UK since 2017. Previously, I was an Associate Professor at the CEFET-MG in the Department of Computer Engineering, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. I obtained my Ph.D. at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, on the topic of Local Search operators for Genetic Algorithms based on derivative-free quadratic approximation. I also hold an MSc in Mathematics from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, and before that, I received a BSc degree in Mathematics at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.
My research is concerned with population-based multiobjective optimization and matheuristics, experimental assessment of algorithms, dynamical systems, engineering design optimization and mathematical and statistical aspects of optimization theory. My work is concerned with both abstract problems as well as applied ones.
Tea Tušar, Job Market
Tea Tusar is a research fellow at the Department of Intelligent Systems of the Jozef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She was awarded the PhD degree in Information and Communication Technologies by the Jozef Stefan International Postgraduate School for her work on visualizing solution sets in multiobjective optimization. She has completed a one-year postdoctoral fellowship at Inria Lille in France where she worked on benchmarking multiobjective optimizers. Her research interests include evolutionary algorithms for singleobjective and multiobjective optimization with emphasis on visualizing and benchmarking their results and applying them to real-world problems.
Boris Naujoks, Job Market
Boris Naujoks is a professor for Applied Mathematics at TH Köln - Cologne University of Applied Sciences (CUAS). He joint CUAs directly after he received his PhD from Dortmund Technical University in 2011. During his time in Dortmund, Boris worked as a research assistant in different projects and gained industrial experience working for different SMEs. Meanwhile, he enjoys the combination of teaching mathematics as well as computer science and exploring EC and CI techniques at the Campus Gummersbach of CUAS. He focuses on multiobjective (evolutionary) optimization, in particular hypervolume based algorithms, and the (industrial) applicability of the explored methods.
Business Committee
Peter A.N. Bosman, Business Committee
Peter A. N. Bosman is a senior researcher in the Life Sciences research group at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) (Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science) located in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Peter was formerly affiliated with the Department of Information and Computing Sciences at Utrecht University, where also he obtained both his MSc and PhD degrees in Computer Science, more specifically on the design and application of estimation-of-distribution algorithms (EDAs). He has (co-)authored over 90 refereed publications on both algorithmic design aspects and real-world applications of evolutionary algorithms. At the GECCO conference, Peter has previously been track (co-)chair (EDA track, 2006, 2009), late-breaking-papers chair (2007), (co-)workshop organizer (OBUPM workshop, 2006; EvoDOP workshop, 2007; GreenGEC workshop, 2012-2014), (co-)local chair (2013) and general chair (2017).
Darrell Whitley, Business Committee
Darrell Whitley is a Professor of Computer Science at Colorado State University. He served as the Chair of the International Society of Genetic Algorithm from 1993 to 1997, and as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Evolutionary Computation from 1997 to 2003. He was Chair of the Governing Board of ACM SIGEVO from 2007 to 2011. He was named an ACM Fellow in 2019 for his contributions to the field of genetic and evolutionary computation.