Call for Abstracts and Participation

3rd Workshop on Theory of Randomized Search Heuristics
Birmingham, UK, October 19-20th 2009


http://trsh.org



Important dates

* Submission: Sep 11th 2009
* Notification: Sep 18th 2009
* Registration: Oct 1st 2009
* Workshop: Oct 19th-20th 2009


Description

Randomised search heuristics have been highly successful in various
applications, both in combinatorial and numerical optimisation. In
contrast to problem-specific randomised algorithms, they are designed
to be general black-box optimisers.

Given such a scenario, proving that such algorithms satisfy certain
performance guarantees remains a hard and widely open problem. Gaining
a theoretical understanding of randomised search heuristics is
therefore an important task. Since these search heuristics are of a
stochastic nature, there is a clear potential in applying techniques
developed in the area of design and analysis of problem-specific
randomised algorithms, in addition to the mathematical methods that
are developed specifically to analyse randomised search heuristics.

Randomised search heuristics include, but are not limited to,

* evolutionary algorithms,
* immune system inspired algorithms,
* particle swarm optimisation
* ant colony optimisation,
* simulated annealing, and
* tabu search.


Aim

The aim of this workshop is to stimulate interactions between people
already working on these problems and those with a general background
in natural computation or randomised algorithms or both. The primary
focus is on discussing recent ideas and detecting interesting topics
for future work, rather than in presenting final results.


Keynote speaker

* Artur Czumaj (University of Warwick, UK)


Tutorial speakers

Theory of randomised search heuristics for continuous optimisation.

* Anne Auger (INRIA Saclay, France)
* Nikolaus Hansen (INRIA Saclay, France)

Theory of randomised search heuristics for discrete optimisation.

* Thomas Jansen (University College Cork, Ireland)


Submission of Abstracts

Technical talks by researchers working on various aspects of the
theory of randomised search heuristics will follow the tutorials.
Researchers working on theoretical aspects of randomised search
heuristics are invited to submit proposals for a talk in form of a
short abstract (one single page) in PDF format to submission@trsh.org.

Participants are free to present both previously published work and
new ideas. As there will be no printed proceedings, presented work can
be published elsewhere.


Registration

Registration is via email to registration@trsh.org. There is no
registration fee.


Organising committee

* Per Kristian Lehre (University of Birmingham, UK)
* Pietro S. Oliveto (University of Birmingham, UK)
* Xin Yao (University of Birmingham, UK)


Steering committee

* Anne Auger (INRIA Saclay, France)
* Benjamin Doerr (Max-Planck-Institut fur Informatik, Germany)
* Thomas Jansen (University College Cork, Ireland)
* Per Kristian Lehre (University of Birmingham, UK)
* Frank Neumann (Max-Planck-Institut fur Informatik, Germany)
* Pietro S. Oliveto (University of Birmingham, UK)
* Carsten Witt (Technical University of Denmark)