Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines
Special Issue on
Evolutionary Computation in Dynamic and Uncertain Environments

Call for Papers

Many real-world optimization problems, such as hardware design or job shop scheduling, are subjected to dynamic and uncertain environments that are often impossible to avoid in practice. For instance, the fitness function is uncertain or noisy as a result of simulation/measurement errors or approximation errors. In addition, the design variables or environmental conditions may also perturb or change over time. For these dynamic and uncertain optimization problems, the objective of the evolutionary algorithm is no longer to simply locate the global optimum solution, but to continuously track the optimum in dynamic environments, or to find a robust solution that operates optimally in the presence of uncertainties. This poses serious challenges to conventional evolutionary algorithms.

Handling dynamic and uncertain optimization problems in evolutionary computation has received an increasing research interests over the recent years. A variety of methods have been reported across a broad range of application backgrounds. This special issue aims to reflect the most recent advances in the field, present sophisticated real-world applications, and explore future directions in this field.

Topics of interest may include but are not limited to:

• Tracking moving optima
• Dynamic multi-objective optimization
• Searching for robust optimal solutions
• Adaptive programs/machines in dynamic/uncertain environments
• Handling noisy fitness functions
• Using fitness approximations
• Comparative studies
• Hybrid approaches
• Theoretical analysis
• Benchmark problems performance measures
• Circuit design and test, job shop scheduling and other real-world applications

Submission procedure:

All electronic submissions must be sent to Dr. Shengxiang Yang at s.yang@mcs.le.ac.uk. Manuscripts should conform to the standard format of the Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machine journal as indicated in the Information for Authors. All submissions will be peer reviewed subject to the standards of the journal. Manuscripts based on previously published conference papers, e.g., CEC'05 and GECCO'05, must be extended substantially. Electronic submissions in postscript or PDF are strongly preferred.

All enquiries on this special issue should be sent to Dr. Shengxiang Yang at s.yang@mcs.le.ac.uk, Dr. Yew Soon Ong at asysong@ntu.edu.sg, or Dr. Yaochu Jin at yaochu.jin@honda-ri.de. Prospective authors are also invited to send an email to Dr. Yang indicating their interest in submitting a paper and the specific topics addressed.

Guest editors:

Dr. Shengxiang Yang
Department of Computer Science
University of Leicester
University Road
Leicester LE1 7RH, United Kingdom
Tel: +44-116-252 5341
Fax: +44-116-252 3915
E-mail: s.yang@mcs.le.ac.uk
http://www.cs.le.ac.uk/~syang

Dr. Yew Soon Ong
School of Computer Engineering
Nanyang Technological University
Blk N4, 2b-39, Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798
Tel : +65-6790-6448
Fax: +65-6792-6559
E-mail: asysong@ntu.edu.sg
http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/asysong/

Dr. Yaochu Jin
Honda Research Institute Europe
Carl-Legien-Str 30
63073 Offenbach am Main
GERMANY
Phone: +49 69 890 11 735
Fax: +49 69 890 11 749
Email: yaochu.jin@honda-ri.de

A tentative schedule is as follows:


• Submission deadline: July 31, 2005
• Notification of acceptance: December 31, 2005
• Final manuscript: February 28, 2006