Overview

Evolutionary optimization involves a large family of stochastic heuristic algorithms for tackling optimization problems. As a kind of general-purpose optimization tool, evolutionary optimization requires very few properties of an optimization problem. Briefly, the problems, in which the solution quality can be evaluated, are in the range of the applicability of evolutionary optimization. It, therefore, has been successfully applied in the cases where the traditional optimization approaches fail. In recent years, it has received further developements on the theoretical ground as well as the fitness for practical problems.

The aim of the tutorial is to introduce evolutionary optimization to the AI students and researchers, whom are interested in trying nontraditional optimization tools. This tutorial covers introductory materials as well as advanced topics organized in two branches, theoretical and practical. For the attendees, no pre-knowledge about evolutionary optimization/algorithms is required. We only assume the audience is familiar with basic probability and statistical theory.

Slides & Outline

Part 1. Introduction (PDF)
Part 2. Theoretical Foundation (PDF)
Part 3. Recent Advances on Practical Evolutionary Optimization (PDF)

Presenters

	Yang Yu	Yang Yu is an assistant researcher in the Department of Computer Science & Technology of Nanjing University, China. He received his Ph.D. degree from Department of Computer Science of Nanjing University in 2011, with the dissertation "Evolutionary Computation: Theoretical Analysis and Learning Algorithms" . His research interests include evolutionary computation and its applications in machine learning and reinforcement learning. He has published 20 research papers in artificial intelligence journals and conferences such as Artificial Intelligence and IJCAI. He received the best paper award of PAKDD'08, the best theory paper award of GECCO'11, the best poster award of KDD'12, and China Computer Federation Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation award in 2011.
	Ke Tang	Ke Tang is a professor in University of Science and Technology of China and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham. He received his Ph.D. degree from the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in 2007. His major research interests include evolutionary computation and machine learning, and has authored/co-authored more than 50 refereed publications in these fields. He is an associate editor of IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine and serves as a program co-chair of 2010 and 2013 IEEE Congress of Evolutionary Computation, held in Barcelona and Cancun, respectively.
	Xin Yao	Xin Yao is a professor of computer science from the University of Birmingham, UK. He was also a Distinguished Visiting Professor of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), P. R. China, and a visiting professor of three other universities. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, Editor-in-Chief (2003-08) of IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, an associate editor or an editorial board member of 11 other journals. He was the winner of 2001 IEEE Donald G. Fink prize paper award and several other best paper awards. His research interests include evolutionary computation, neural network ensembles, and their applications. He has more than 300 refereed publications in those areas. He is currently the Director of the Centre of Excellence for Research in Computational Intelligence and Applications (CERCIA) , which is focused on applied research and knowledge transfer to industry.
	Zhi-Hua Zhou	Zhi-Hua Zhou is a professor of the Department of Computer Science & Technology, and deputy director of the National Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University, China. His research interests mainly include artificial intelligence, machine learning, data mining, pattern recognition and multimedia information retrieval. In these areas he has published more than 100 papers in leading international journals or conference proceedings, and holds 12 patents. He serves as Associate Editor-in-Chief of the Chinese Science Bulletin, and Associate Editor or Editorial boards member of ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology and more than 10 other journals. He is the founder and Steering Committee Chair of ACML, Steering Committee member of PAKDD and PRICAI, and chair of more than twenty conferences. He is a Fellow of IAPR, Fellow of IEEE, and recipient of awards including the National Science & Technology Award for Young Scholars of China, the Fok Ying Tung Young Professorship Award, the Microsoft Young Professorship Award, and nine journal/conference paper or competition awards.