CFP: OBUPM-2006 Workshop at GECCO 2006

[Peter A.N. Bosman]

[We apologize for cross-postings]


              Workshop Announcement and Call for Participation

                               Workshop on

                   OPTIMIZATION BY BUILDING AND USING
                   PROBABILISTIC MODELS (OBUPM-2006)
            --- Special focus on continuous optimization ---
               http://minner.bwl.uni-mannheim.de/obupm06/


                         to be held as part of the

     2006 GENETIC AND EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION CONFERENCE (GECCO-2006)

                    July 8-12, 2006 (Saturday-Wednesday)
                         Renaissance Seattle Hotel
                         Seattle, Washington, USA
                         Organized by ACM SIG-EVO
                         www.sigevo.org/GECCO-2006

           PAPER SUBMISSION DEADLINE FOR WORKSHOP: March 12, 2006


TOPIC
=====
Genetic- and evolutionary algorithms (GEAs) evolve a population of
candidate solutions to a given optimization problem using two basic
operators: (1) selection and (2) variation. Selection introduces a
pressure toward high-quality solutions, whereas variation ensures
exploration of the space of all potential solutions. Two variation
operators are common in current genetic- and evolutionary computation
(GEC): (1) crossover, and (2) mutation. Crossover creates new
candidate solutions by combining bits and pieces of promising
solutions, whereas mutation introduces slight perturbations to
promising solutions to explore their immediate neighborhood. However,
fixed, problem-independent variation operators often fail to
effectively exploit important features of high-quality selected
solutions. One way to make variation operators more powerful and
flexible is to replace traditional variation of GEAs by the
following two steps: 1. Build a probabilistic model of the selected
promising solutions, and 2. sample the built model to generate a new
population of candidate solutions. Algorithms based on this principle
are commonly called estimation-of-distribution algorithms (EDAs) but
are also known as probabilistic model-building genetic algorithms
(PMBGAs) and as iterated density-estimation evolutionary algorithms
(IDEAs). The general purpose of this workshop is to present and discuss

     * recent advances in EDAs,
     * new theoretical and empirical results,
     * applications of EDAs, and
     * promising directions for future EDA research.


SCOPE
=====
The OBUPM-2006 workshop has a specific focus on continuous optimization.
Most work in the OBUPM area, and concordantly the most promising results,
has been on discrete optimization using discrete representations. An
interesting research topic is how these successes can be carried over
to continuous optimization. Initial investigations have met with less
convincing results than in the case of discrete optimization. Recently,
the amount of research into this direction has been increasing and has
lead to new insights about the design of EDAs for continuous
optimization. In the light of this trend the OBUPM-2006 workshop aims
to push onward the state-of-the-art in EDAs for continuous optimization,
both theoretical as well as empirical by

     * providing an opportunity for researchers to present their
       latest work and
     * organizing a panel discussion on the most important aspects
       regarding EDAs for continuous optimization.

For completeness it should be noted that the special focus of the
OBUPM-2006 workshop includes the use of any EDA approach for continuous
optimization (i.e. also discrete EDAs), both single-objective as well
as multi-objective.


SUBMITTING TO OBUPM-2006
========================
The workshop will feature a series of selected presentations.
To submit your contribution, send your ACM-formatted paper in
Postscript or PDF by e-mail to Peter A.N. Bosman at
Peter.Bosman@.... Papers should not exceed the limit of
8 pages and must meet with deadline of the workshop (see important
dates for details). In case you can not submit your paper
electronically, please contact one of the workshop chairs.

Please note that all contributions must abide ACM formatting
rules because all contributions will be on the conference CD
as well as in the ACM digital library. Failing to comply with
the ACM formatting rules will result in exclusion from the
proceedings. Visit http://www.sigevo.org/gecco-2006/submitting.html
for formatting details.


IMPORTANT DATES FOR OBUPM-2006
==============================
March 12, 2006: Paper submission deadline

April  1, 2006: Notification of acceptance

April 19, 2006: Camera-ready copy deadline


WEBSITE
=======

The workshop program and further information can be found online. Please
check http://minner.bwl.uni-mannheim.de/obupm06/ regularly for the latest
information. In case you have any questions, please contact one of the
workshop organizers.

We are looking forward to meeting you at OBUPM-2006!


WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS
===================

Peter A.N. Bosman
Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science
Theme of Computational Intelligence and Multi-Agent Games
Email: Peter.Bosman @ cwi.nl

Jörn Grahl
Mannheim Business School
Department of Logistics
Email: joern.grahl @ bwl.uni-mannheim.de

Kumara Sastry
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Illinois Genetic Algorithms Laboratory
Email: ksastry @ uiuc.edu

Martin Pelikan
University of Missouri at St. Louis
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Email: pelikan @ cs.umsl.edu

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