Building on the success of LION 1 and LION 2 we are organizing a new event for January 2009. If interested, mark it on your agenda or link to this web page ( http://www.intelligent-optimization.org/LION3 ) and plan for submitting good quality work (we also anticipate a best paper award as in LION 2 edition).

Scope of the conference

The current explosion in the number and variety of heuristic algorithms for hard optimization problems raises numerous interesting and challenging issues. Practitioners are confronted with the burden of selecting the most appropriate method, in many cases through an expensive algorithm configuration and parameter tuning process, and subject to a steep learning curve. Scientists seek theoretical insights and demand a sound experimental methodology for evaluating algorithms and assessing strengths and weaknesses. A necessary prerequisite for this effort is a clear separation between the algorithm and the experimenter, who, in too many cases, is "in the loop" as a crucial intelligent learning component. Both issues are related to designing and engineering ways of "learning" about the performance of different techniques, and ways of using memory about algorithm behavior in the past to improve performance in the future. Intelligent learning schemes for mining the knowledge obtained from different runs or during a single run can improve the algorithm development and design process and simplify the applications of high-performance optimization methods. Combinations of algorithms can further improve the robustness and performance of the individual components provided that sufficient knowledge of the relationship between problem instance characteristics and algorithm performance is obtained.

This meeting is aimed at exploring the boundaries and uncharted territories between machine learning, artificial intelligence, mathematical programming and algorithms for hard optimization problems. The main purpose of the event is to bring together experts from these areas to discuss new ideas and methods, challenges and opportunities in various application areas, general trends and specific developments. To that end, a substantial part of the program will consist of invited presentations, discussion sessions and advanced tutorials.

Organization
Conference General Chair: Bart Selman, Cornell University (USA)

Technical Program Committee Chair: Thomas Stützle, Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)

Steering Committee Chair: Roberto Battiti, University of Trento (Italy)

Steering Committee: Roberto Battiti, Holger Hoos, Mauro Brunato

Technical Program Committee:
Ethem Alpaydin, Bogazici University (Turkey)
Roberto Battiti, University of Trento (Italy)
Mauro Birattari, Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)
Christian Blum, Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya (Spain)
Immanuel Bomze, University of Vienna (Austria)
Andrea Bonarini, Politecnico di Milano (Italy)
Juergen Branke, University of Karlsruhe (Germany)
Mauro Brunato, Universtity of Trento (Italy)
Carlos Cotta, Universidad de Málaga (Spain)
Karl Doerner, University of Vienna (Austria)
Marco Dorigo, Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)
Michel Gendreau, Université de Montréal (Canada)
Carla Gomes, Cornell University (USA)
Marco Gori, University of Siena (Italy)
Walter Gutjahr, University of Vienna (Austria)
Youssef Hamadi, Microsoft Research, Cambridge (UK)
Richard Hartl, University of Vienna (Austria)
Geir Hasle, SINTEF Applied Mathematics (Norway)
Pascal van Hentenryck, Brown University (USA)
Franzisco Herrera, Universidad de Granada (Spain)
Tomio Hirata, Nagoya University (Japan)
Holger Hoos, University of British Columbia (Canada)
Bernardo Huberman, Hewlett - Packard (USA)
Márk Jelasity, University of Szeged (Hungary)
Narendra Jussien, Ecole des Mines de Nantes (France)
Zeynep Kiziltan, University of Bologna (Italy)
Michail G. Lagoudakis, Technical University of Crete (Greece)
Vittorio Maniezzo, Università di Bologna (Italy)
Elena Marchiori, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (The Nederlands)
Francesco Masulli, Università degli Studi di Genova (Italy)
Lyle A. McGeoch, Amherst College (USA)
Peter Merz, Technische Universität Kaiserslautern (Germany)
Zbigniew Michalewicz, School of Computer Science, University of Adelaide (Australia)
Nenad Mladenovic, School of Mathematics, Brunel University, West London (UK)
Pablo Moscato, The University of Newcastle (Australia)
Amiram Moshaiov, Tel-Aviv University (Israel)
Raymond Ng, University of British Columbia (Canada)
Panos Pardalos, University of Florida (USA)
Marcello Pelillo, Università "Ca' Foscari" di Venezia (Italy)
Vincenzo Piuri, Università di Milano (Italy)
Christian Prins, University of Technology of Troyes (France)
Guenther Raidl, Technische Universität Wien (Austria)
Franz Rendl, Institut für Mathematik, Universität Klagenfurt (Austria)
Celso Ribeiro, Puntifíca Iniversidade Católoca do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
Ruben Ruiz, Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain)
Wheeler Ruml, University of New Hampshire (USA)
Andrea Schaerf, University of Udine (Italy)
Marc Schoenauer, INRIA (France)
Meinolf Sellmann, Brown University (USA)
Bart Selman, Cornell University (USA)
Yaroslav D. Sergeyev, Università della Calabria (Italy)
Marc Sevaux, University of South-Brittany (France)
Patrick Siarry, Université Paris XII Val De Marne, Paris, (France)
Kate Smith-Miles, Deakin University (Australia)
Christine Solnon, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France)
Thomas Stuetzle, Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)
�?ric Taillard, University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland (Switzerland)
Jose. Luis Verdegay, Universidad de Granada (Spain)
Stefan Voss, Institute of Information Systems, University of Hamburg (Germany)
Benjamin W. Wah, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (USA)
Jean-Paul Watson, Sandia National Laboratories (USA)
Darrell Whitley, Colorado State University (USA)
David Woodruff, University of California, Davis (USA)
Qingfu Zhang, University of Essex (UK)

Important dates

* Oct 15 2008 Submission deadline