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Workshop
Workshop on Nature-Inspired Mechanisms and Operators - NIMO 2024

20 - 22 November, 2024 - Porto, Portugal

In conjunction with the 16th International Joint Conference on Computational Intelligence - IJCCI 2024


CO-CHAIRS

Alexandros Tzanetos
Department of Computing, School of Engineering, Jonkoping University
Sweden
 
Brief Bio
Dr. Tzanetos received his Diploma in Financial and Management Engineering from the Department of Financial and Management Engineering, School of Engineering, University of the Aegean, Chios, Greece, in 2013 and his Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence in 2020. He worked as a Post-Doctorate Research Fellow in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Université de Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada, for two years. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computing, School of Engineering, Jönköping University, Jönköping, Sweden. His main areas of research interest are Evolutionary Computation, Artificial Intelligence, Operational Research, and applications in real-world optimization problems. He is the Section Editor of Artificial Intelligence for the academic journal Data in Brief.
Jakub Kudela
Brno University of Technology
Czech Republic
 
Brief Bio
Dr. Kudela received his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the Institute of Mathematics, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic, in 2019. Since 2018, he works at the Institute of Automation and Computer Science, Brno University of Technology, now in the position of Assistant Professor. His main research interests include the development of computational methods for various optimization problems in engineering applications and benchmarking optimization algorithms.

SCOPE

Evolutionary Computation (EC) and Swarm Intelligence (SI) offer a variety of approaches to deal with high-complexity real-world problems. Yet, not all algorithms from these fields constitute a novel search strategy. The majority of them replicate the ideas introduced in the established ones, i.e., Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), and Genetic Algorithm (GA) [6]. Moreover, several recently introduced algorithms contain a center-bias operator, making them unsuitable for optimization tasks [3]. Moreover, several other structural biases have been detected in such algorithms [7].

However, some algorithms contain promising mechanisms that can be used to overcome known limitations observed in stochastic nature-inspired algorithms. A recent work’s findings [5] support this idea. The Mine Explosion mechanism (found in the Mine Blast Algorithm) and the Big Bang - Big Crunch mechanism (from the homonymous algorithm) could be incorporated into algorithms with high exploitation ability to enhance their performance through exploration. And there are potentially more such mechanisms that can be found in the various nature-inspired algorithms and have beneficial effects for other methods.

Furthermore, novel operators have been proposed to enhance the algorithms’ performance. For example, fitness-distance balance is a recent selection method that enables the proper determination of candidates with the highest potential to improve the search process [2]. Also, a new set of evolutionary operators was presented in [4].

This Workshop focuses on the research of mechanisms that could be used to modify the algorithmic process of EC and SI algorithms. The aim is to enhance the performance of existing nature-inspired algorithms and overcome well-known drawbacks, such as premature convergence and structural bias.

We encourage submissions that study the prospects of existing mechanisms and provide theoretical background on mechanisms or operators explicitly designed for EC and SI algorithms.

This Workshop fully seconds the call-for-action of [1]. Therefore, submissions proposing new metaphor-based algorithms are not encouraged. Meanwhile, the studied mechanisms and operators must be described and investigated using the normal, standard optimization terminology.

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[1] Claus Aranha, Christian L Camacho Villalón, Felipe Campelo, Marco Dorigo, Rubén Ruiz, Marc Sevaux, Kenneth Sörensen, and Thomas Stützle. Metaphor-based metaheuristics, a call for action: the elephant in the room. Swarm Intelligence, 16(1):1–6, 2022.
[2] Hamdi Tolga Kahraman, Sefa Aras, and Eyüp Gedikli. Fitness-distance balance (fdb): a new selection method for meta-heuristic search algorithms. Knowledge-Based Systems, 190:105169, 2020.
[3] Jakub Kudela. A critical problem in benchmarking and analysis of evolutionary computation methods. Nature Machine Intelligence, 4(12):1238–1245, 2022.
[4] Bernardo Morales-Castaneda, Oscar Maciel-Castillo, Mario A Navarro, Itzel Aranguren, Arturo Valdivia, Alfonso Ramos-Michel, Diego Oliva, and Salvador Hinojosa. Handling stagnation through diversity analysis: A new set of operators for evolutionary algorithms. In 2022 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC), pages 1–7. IEEE, 2022.
[5] Marios Thymianis and Alexandros Tzanetos. Is integration of mechanisms a way to enhance a nature-inspired algorithm? Natural Computing, pages 1–21, 2022.
[6] Alexandros Tzanetos. Does the field of nature-inspired computing contribute to achieving lifelike features? Artificial Life, pages 1–25.
[7] Diederick Vermetten, Bas van Stein, Fabio Caraffini, Leandro L Minku, and Anna V Kononova. Bias: a toolbox for benchmarking structural bias in the continuous domain. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, 26(6):1380–1393, 2022

TOPICS OF INTEREST

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
  • Implementation of Mechanisms/Operators being Part of Existing EC and SI Algorithms
  • Hybridization and Adaptation of Algorithms
  • Premature Convergence and Stagnation
  • Exploration-Exploitation Trade-off
  • Applications of Modified Algorithms on Real-world Problems
  • Mathematical and Theoretical Analysis of Mechanisms/Operators included in EC and SI Algorithms
  • Means of Assessing and Benchmarking the Mechanisms/operators Usefulness and Interplay

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper Submission: September 20, 2024 (expired)
Authors Notification: October 4, 2024 (expired)
Camera Ready and Registration: October 14, 2024 (expired)

WORKSHOP PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Maxim Buzdalov, Department of Computer Science, Aberystwyth University, United Kingdom
Christian L. Camacho Villalon, IRIDIA, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium / Department of Knowledge Technologies, Institute Jožef Stefan, Slovenia
Stephen Chen, School of Information Technology, York University, Canada
Tome Eftimov, Jožef Stefan Institute, Slovenia
Giovanni Iacca, University of Trento, Italy
Radomil Matousek, Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic
Beatrice Ombuki-Berman, Brock University, Canada
Hendrik Richter, Leipzig University of Applied Sciences, Germany
Roman Senkerik, Tomas Bata University in Zlín, Czech Republic
Eva Tuba, Trinity University, United States
Christian Leonardo Camacho Villalón, IRIDIA, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Daniela Zaharie, West University of Timisoara, Romania

(list not yet complete)

PAPER SUBMISSION

Prospective authors are invited to submit papers in any of the topics listed above.
Instructions for preparing the manuscript (in Word and Latex formats) are available at: Paper Templates
Please also check the Guidelines.
Papers must be submitted electronically via the web-based submission system using the appropriated button on this page.

PUBLICATIONS

After thorough reviewing by the workshop program committee, all accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings book, under an ISBN reference and on digital support.
All papers presented at the conference venue will be available at the SCITEPRESS Digital Library (http://www.scitepress.org/DigitalLibrary/).
SCITEPRESS is a member of CrossRef (http://www.crossref.org/) and every paper is given a DOI (Digital Object Identifier).

SECRETARIAT CONTACTS

IJCCI Workshops - NIMO 2024
e-mail: ecta.secretariat@insticc.org
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