Keynote

Evolutionary Computation: A Unified Perspective

Kenneth A. De Jong

Abstract: The field of Evolutionary Computation has experienced tremendous growth over the past 15 years, resulting in a wide variety of evolutionary algorithms and applications. The result poses an interesting dilemma for many practitioners in the sense that, with such a wide variety of algorithms and approaches, it is often hard to see the relationships between them, assess strengths and weaknesses, and make good choices for new application areas. This presentation is intended to give an overview of EC via a general framework that can help compare and contrast approaches, encourages crossbreeding, and facilitates intelligent design choices. The use of this framework is then illustrated by showing how traditional EAs can be compared and contrasted with it, and how new EAs can be effectively designed using it.

Bio: Dr. De Jong is a Professor of Computer Science and Associate Director of the Krasnow Institute at George Mason University. Dr. De Jong's research interests include evolutionary computation, adaptive systems and machine learning. He is an active member of the Evolutionary Computation research community with a variety of papers, Ph.D. students, and presentations in this area. He is also responsible for many of the workshops and conferences on Evolutionary Algorithms. He is the founding editor-in-chief of the journal Evolutionary Computation (MIT Press), and a member of the board of ACM SIGEVO. He is the recipient of an IEEE Pioneer award in the field of Evolutionary Computation and a lifetime achievement award from the Evolutionary Programming Society.