EU/ME – EURO Working Group on Metaheuristics

MESS 2020+1 ~ Learning & Optimization from Big Data ~ 15-18 June 2021
2021-06-15 - 2021-06-18 | Events
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MESS 2020+1 – Metaheuristics Summer School
– Learning & Optimization from Big Data –
15-18 June 2021, Catania, Italy (virtual and onsite mode)
https://www.ANTs-lab.it/mess2020/
mess.school@ANTs-lab.it
https://www.facebook.com/groups/MetaheuristicsSchool/ ———————————————————————–
** APPLICATION DEADLINE: 5th March 2021 **||
https://www.ants-lab.it/mess2020/application/
MESS 2020+1 is aimed at qualified and strongly motivated MSc and PhD students; post-docs; young researchers, and both academic and industrial professionals to provide an overview on the several metaheuristics techniques, and an in-depth analysis of the state-of-the-art. The main theme of this edition is “Learning and Optimization from Big Data”, therefore MESS 2020+1 wants to focus on (i) Learning for Metaheuristics; (ii) Optimization in Machine Learning; and (iii) how Optimization and Learning affect the Metaheuristics making them relevant in handling Big Data.
Participants will be delivered a certificate of attendance indicating the number of hours of lectures (36-40 hours of lectures). In according to the academic system all PhD and master students attending to the summer school will may get 8 ECTS points.
** LIST OF LECTURERS & LECTURES TITLES
+ Paolo Arena, Unviersity of Catania, Italy
Lecture#1: TBA
Lecture#2: TBA
+ Angelo Cangelosi, University of Manchester & Alan Turing Institute, UK
Lecture#1: Cognitive and Developmental Robotics, part 1
Lecture#2: Cognitive and Developmental Robotics, part 2
+ Swagatam Das, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata
Lecture#1: Deep Generative Adversarial Networks and Their Application to Class-imbalanced Learning
Lecture#2: Non-convex Constrained Optimization – Some Advanced Approaches
+ Luca Maria Gambardella, IDSIA Istituto Dalle Molle for Artificial Intelligence, Switzerland
Lecture#1: TBA
Lecture#2: TBA
+ Salvatore Greco, University of Catania, Italy & University of Portsmouth, UK
Lecture#1: Preference Learning in Multicriteria Decision Support
Lecture#2: Evolutionary Multiobjective Optimization Guided by Preference Learning
+ Giuseppe F. Italiano, Luiss University, Italy
Lecture#1: TBA
Lecture#2: TBA
+ Rafael Martì, University of Valencia, Spain
Lecture#1: Optimization in Graph Drawing
Lecture#2: Models and Heuristics in Discrete Diversity Maximization
+ Gabriela Ochoa, University of Stirling, UK
Lecture#1: Fitness Landscape Analysis
Lecture#2: Complex Networks in Search and Optimisation
+ Mauricio Resende, AMAZON, USA
Lecture#1: GRASP with Path-Relinking for Real-World Optimization Problems
Lecture#2: Biased Random-Key Genetic Algorithms with Applications
+ El-Ghazali Talbi, University of Lille 1, France
Lecture#1: Machine learning for metaheuristics
Lecture#2: Automated design of deep neural networks
+ Daniele Vigo, University of Bologna, Italy
Lecture#1: Fast and scalable heuristics for vehicle routing problems
Lecture#2: Integrating machine learning into vehicle routing heuristics
** METAHEURISTICS COMPETITION
All participants to the school will be involved in the “Metaheuristics Competition”, where each of them will must develop a metaheuristic solution on the given problem. The top three of the competition ranking will receive the MESS 2020+1 prize. Students whose algorithm will rank in the top ten of the competition ranking will be invited to submit a manuscript of their work to be published in the special volume MESS 2020+1 of the AIRO Springer Series.
** SHORT TALK & POSTER PRESENTATION
All participants may submit an abstract of their recent results, or works in progress, for presentation and having the opportunities for debate and interact with leaders in the field. Mini-Workshop Organizers and Scientific Committee will review the abstracts and will recommend for the format of the presentation (oral or poster). All abstracts will be published on the electronic hands-out book of the summer school.
The Abstracts must be submitted by *March 5, 2020*.
*See Previous Edition – MESS 2018*
https://www.ants-lab.it/mess2018/
** MORE INFORMATION:
https://www.ANTs-lab.it/mess2020/ — mess.school@ANTs-lab.it Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/MetaheuristicsSchool/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/MESS_school

MESS 2020 ~ Learning & Optimization from Big Data ~ Catania, 27-31 July 2020
2020-07-27 - 2020-07-31 | Events
MESS 2020 – Metaheuristics Summer School
– Learning & Optimization from Big Data –
27-31 July 2020, Catania, Italy
MESS 2020 Webpage
mess.school@ANTs-lab.it
MESS on Facebook
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*** ONCE MONTH LEFT!!! ***
** APPLICATION DEADLINE: 5th March 2020 **
https://www.ants-lab.it/mess2020/application/
MESS 2020 is aimed at qualified and strongly motivated MSc and PhD
students; post-docs; young researchers, and both academic and
industrial professionals to provide an overview on the several
metaheuristics techniques, and an in-depth analysis of the
state-of-the-art. The main theme of the 2020 edition is ?Learning and
Optimization from Big Data?, therefore MESS 2020 wants to focus on (i)
Learning for Metaheuristics; (ii) Optimization in Machine Learning;
and (iii) how Optimization and Learning affect the Metaheuristics
making them relevant in handling Big Data.
All participants will have plenty of opportunities for debate and work
with leaders in the field, benefiting from direct interaction and
discussions in a stimulating environment. They will also have the
possibility to present their recently results and/or their working in
progress through oral or poster presentations, and interact with their
scientific peers, in a friendly and constructive environment.
Participants will be delivered a certificate of attendance indicating
the number of hours of lectures (36-40 hours of lectures). In
according to the academic system all PhD and master students attending
to the summer school will may get 8 ECTS points.
** LIST OF LECTURERS
+ Angelo Cangelosi, University of Manchester & Alan Turing Institute, UK
+ Swagatam Das, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata
+ Luca Maria Gambardella, IDSIA Istituto Dalle Molle for Artificial
Intelligence, Switzerland
+ Salvatore Greco, University of Catania, Italy & University of Portsmouth, UK
+ Emma Hart, Edinburgh Napier University, UK
+ Mauricio Resende, AMAZON, USA
+ Roman Slowinski, Pozna? University of Technology, Poland
+ El-Ghazali Talbi, University of Lille 1, France
+ Daniele Vigo, University of Bologna, Italy
More Lecturers will be announced soon.
** SCHOOL DIRECTORS
+ Pascal Bouvry, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
+ Salvatore Greco, University of Catania, Italy
+ Ender Ozcan, University of Nottingham, UK
+ Mario Pavone, University of Catania, Italy
+ El-Ghazali Talbi, University of Lille 1, France
+ Daniele Vigo, University of Bologna, Italy
** METAHEURISTICS COMPETITION
All participants to the school will be involved in the ?Metaheuristics
Competition?, where each of them will must develop a metaheuristic
solution on the given problem. The top three of the competition
ranking will receive the MESS 2020 prize. Students whose algorithm
will rank in the first five top of the competition ranking, will be
invited to submit a report/manuscript of their work to be published in
the special MESS 2020 Volume of the AIRO Springer Series.
** METAHEURISTICS COMPETITION CHAIRS
+ Raffaele Cerulli, University of Salerno, Italy
+ Andrea Schaerf, University of Udine, Italy
** SHORT TALK & POSTER PRESENTATION
All participants may submit an abstract of their recent results, or
works in progress, for presentation and having the opportunities for
debate and interact with leaders in the field. Mini-Workshop
Organizers and Scientific Committee will review the abstracts and will
recommend for the format of the presentation (oral or poster). All
abstracts will be published on the electronic hands-out book of the
summer school.
The Abstracts must be submitted by *March 5, 2020*.
** WORKSHOP CHAIRS
+ Vincenzo Cutello, University of Catania, Italy
+ Paola Festa, University of Naples ?Federico II?, Italy
+ Isaac Triguero, University of Nottingham, UK
*See Previous Edition – MESS 2018*
https://www.ants-lab.it/mess2018/
** MORE INFORMATION:
https://www.ants-lab.it/mess2020/ — mess.school@ANTs-lab.it
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/MetaheuristicsSchool/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MESS_school

MIC 2019, Cartagena
2019-07-28 - 2019-07-31 | Universidad de los Andes (sede Caribe), Cartagena, Colombia
13th Metaheuristics International Conference (MIC 2019)

Dates: July 28 – July 31 (2019)
Website: https://mic2019.uniandes.edu.co/

Venue: Universidad de los Andes (sede Caribe)
City: Cartagena, Colombia

SAVE THE DATE
13th Metaheuristics International Conference
Universidad de los Andes (sede Caribe)
July 28-31, 2019
Cartagena de Indias (Colombia)
mh2019@easychair.org

Early bird due date: April 30, 2019
Late registration: From April 31, 2019

INFORMS TSL Workshop 2019 in Vienna
2019-07-15 - 2019-07-19 | University of Vienna, Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1, Wien, A-1090, Austria
tslworkshop2019.univie.ac.at
The next INFORMS TSL Workshop will be held from July 15-19, 2019 at the University of Vienna. The topic of the workshop is “Transportation in the sharing economy”. Sharing economy refers to collaborative consumption. It is typically organized through platforms that facilitate the exchange of goods or services. Given an increasing pressure to act economically and ecologically efficient, mechanisms that help to benefit from idle capacities are on the rise. Both transportation companies and heavy users of transportation services need to learn how to play in a world of shared idle capacities. We anticipate talks on various types of collaborations, crowd delivery, carsharing, carpooling, ridesharing, etc.
======= Topics =======
We will welcome contributions that address modeling, methodological or game theoretical aspects. Possible topics are (but not limited to):
* Collaborative and cooperative transportation
* Crowd shipping or sourcing
* Car-, bike-, or ride sharing
* Car and bike repositioning
* Car pooling
* Intermodal and multimodal transportation
* Synchromodality and the physical internet
* Business model developments in the sharing economy
* Shared mobility services
================ Important dates ================
Submission deadline: January 15, 2019
Notification: February 28, 2019
Early registration deadline: March 31, 2019
============ Submissions ============
Abstracts should be as complete as possible, no less than 2 pages and not exceeding more than 3 pages. Abstract submissions will be handled via EasyChair: easychair.org/conferences/?conf=tsl2019
================ Keynote speakers ================
Martin Bichler (Technical University of Munich)
Michal Tzur (Tel Aviv University)
==================== Organizing Committee ====================
Margaretha Gansterer
Karl Dörner
Richard Hartl
Rudolf Vetschera

Summer School in Vienna
2019-07-01 - 2019-07-05 | Loffice Wien, Schottenfeldgasse 85, Vienna, 1070, Austria
We invite students, researchers and practitioners in the broad field of optimisation to participate at the 15th Summer School on Constraint Programming (CP), held in Vienna, Austria.
This year’s topic is “Applying Constraint Programming” with a strong focus on CP tools, building and extending constraint solvers, decomposition, hybridisation and successful applications of CP on hard real-world problems.
The summer school will include practical labs and a hackathon-style challenge to maximise the learning experience.
Early bird registration until: April 30, 2019
Organisers:

chair: Andrea Rendl, Satalia
co-chair: Tommaso Urli, Satalia

Association for Constraint Programming (ACP): http://a4cp.org

EURO30 - Dublin
2019-06-23 - 2019-06-26 | university college Dublin, Belfield Downs, Dublin, D14 YH57, Ireland
EURO-k conferences are the major EURO events. They are international forums for scientific communication and cooperation among Operational Researchers, not only from European countries, who are active in all the diverse areas of OR, and to serve the free exchange of new ideas and promising research results.

they are broadly oriented and have recently attracted more than 2,000 participants.
they take place yearly, with the possible exception of the years when there is an IFORS triennial conference. Information about past conferences is available.
they are hosted by EURO member societies. They are usually held in a university or similar type of institution.
they usually take place in summer during the first half of July

Conference Structure
EURO-k conferences feature multiple activities around OR, including scientific presentations of the following types:

Plenary, semi-plenary, tutorial and panel sessions given by prestigious invited speakers.
Regular streams, defined as blocks of sessions within a thematic OR area. Sessions can be invited or contributed. Contributed paper presentations are welcomed and processed by the PC.
Making an Impact stream. This is a series of participative activities aimed at helping practitioners to become more effective.
OR Education stream focusing on best practices for teaching OR.

In addition, EURO-k conferences feature some special events, including the following:

Awards of EURO prizes. The EURO Distinguished Service Medal Award and the EURO Gold Medal, accompanied by a lecture of the Gold Medal laureate, are presented at the Opening Session. The presentations of the finalists of the EURO Excellence in Practice Award and the EURO Doctoral Dissertation Award are scheduled as parallel sessions. These prizes are awarded to the winners during the Closing Session along with the winners of the EURO Award for the Best EJOR Papers.
Exhibitors Area.
Possibility of visits to companies where OR is used in daily actvities.

HM 2019
2019-01-16 - 2019-01-18 | Universidad de Concepción, Víctor Lamas 1290 Casilla 160-C, Concepción, Chile
11th International Workshop on Hybrid Metaheuristics
The HM Workshops are intended to be an international forum for researchers in the area of design, analysis, and experimental evaluation of metaheuristics. Metaheuristics, such as simulated annealing, evolutionary algorithms, tabu search, ant colony optimization, scatter search and iterated local search, are considered state-of-the-art methods for many problems. In recent years, however, it has become evident that the concentration on a sole metaheuristic is rather restrictive. A skilled combination of concepts from different optimization techniques can provide a more efficient behavior and a higher flexibility when dealing with real-world and large-scale problems. Hybrid Metaheuristics are such techniques for optimization that combine different metaheuristics or integrate AI/OR techniques into metaheuristics. The preceding Workshops were held in Plymouth (2016), Hamburg (2014), Ischia Island (HM 2013), Vienna (HM 2010), Udine (HM 2009), Malaga (HM 2008), Dortmund (HM 2007), Gran Canaria (HM 2006), Barcelona (HM 2005), and Valencia (HM 2004).

ICVNS 2018, Halkidiki
2018-10-04 - 2018-10-07 | Porto Carras Meliton Hotel, Halikidiki, Greece., Neos Marmaras, Halikidiki, 63081, Greece
http://vns2018.uom.gr
The 6th International Conference on Variable Neighborhood Search will be held in Sithonia, Halkidiki, Greece (Porto Carras Meliton Hotel) October 4-7, 2018. The ICVNS 2018 will be co-organized by the EURO Working Group on Metaheuristics (EWG EU/ME) and, the Computational Methodologies & Operations Research (CMOR Lab) and the Department of Applied Informatics, School of Information Sciences, of the University of Macedonia. VNS is a metaheuristic based on systematic changes in the neighborhood structure within a search, for solving optimization problems and related tasks. The main goal of the ICVNS 2018 is to provide a stimulating environment in which researchers coming from various scientific fields can share and discuss their knowledge, expertise and ideas related to the VNS Metaheuristic and its applications.
Conference Proceedings and Book of Abstracts:
All accepted papers will be published by Springer as a post-proceedings volume in its Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. Participants are also allowed to send just abstract of their presentation. If accepted, they will be published in the Book of abstracts. Paper submission site: https://ocs.springer.com/ocs/home/ICVNS2018
Publication in Special Issues:

Journal of Global Optimization, Springer (I.F.: 1.733, SJR: 1.48)
Optimization Letters, Springer (I.F.: 1.310, SJR: 0.92)
Yugoslav Journal of Operations Research (SJR: 0.32)

Conference Chairs:

Pierre Hansen, GERAD and HEC Montreal, Canada (Honorary Chair of the Conference)
Nenad Mladenović, Mathematical Institute, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Serbia (General Chair)
Angelo Sifaleras, University of Macedonia, Greece (Conference Chair)

Plenary speakers:

Panos M. Pardalos, University of Florida, USA
Abraham Duarte, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain
Daniel Aloise, Polytechnique Montréal, Canada

Venue:
The conference activities will take place at Porto Carras Meliton Hotel, Sithonia, 63081, Halikidiki, Greece. Porto Carras Grand Resort is located only 120km away from the city of Thessaloniki (the second largest city in Greece) and 75 minutes drive from Thessaloniki’s International Airport “Macedonia” (SKG).
Important Dates:

Submission deadline: May 15, 2018
Notification to authors: July 02, 2018
Early registration deadline: July 31, 2018
Preliminary program: September 04, 2018
Conference date: October 4-7, 2018
Camera-ready due: October 31, 2018

Contact: vns2018@uom.edu.gr

Matheuristics 2018, Tours
2018-06-18 - 2018-06-20 | Université François-Rabelais, 60 Rue du Plat d'Étain, Tours, 37000, France
18-20 june 2018, Tours, France
The Matheuristics workshop series is proposed as a primary forum for researchers working on exploiting mathematical programming techniques in a (meta)heuristic framework, granting to mathematical programming approaches the problem robustness and time effectiveness which characterize heuristics, or exploiting the mathematical programming model formulation in the customization of a heuristic for specific or general problems.
Metaheuristics such as tabu search, simulated annealing, GRASP, VNS, genetic algorithms and ant colonies, have been originally proposed and developed when the available Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) algorithms and software or Constraint Programming methods were not an efficient as today, nor even feasible alternative for solving real-world problem instances, or significant subproblems thereof.
However, research on mathematical programming, and in particular on discrete optimization, has led to a state of the art where MIP solvers or customized MIP codes can be effective even in a heuristic context, both as primary solvers or as subprocedures.
Matheuristics 2018 aims at collecting contributions that define the state of the art for the computational effectiveness and efficiency or the theoretical properties of «matheuristics», which are algorithms and codes that integrate (meta)heuristics and MIP strategies and software. The workshop will be entirely devoted to this subject of research and to its applications. The conference program will consist of plenary presentations, enriched by a couple of keynote or tutorial lectures.
Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

Model-based metaheuristics,
Hybridizing (meta)heuristics and exact methods,
MIP techniques used for defining heuristic solvers (such as local branching and RINS),
Problem relaxations to guide (heuristic) search,
Information from exact algorithms to develop heuristics,
Decompositions and lower/upper bounds in matheuristic codes,
Stochastic programming and heuristic search,
Metaheuristics for stochastic problems,
Design and configuration of matheuristic algorithms,
Experimental analysis and modeling of algorithms,
Real world case histories of matheuristic applications, and
Automatic configuration of matheuristics and algorithm selection among others.

After successful matheuristic workshops organized in 2006 and 2008 in Bertinoro (Italie), in 2010 in Vienna (Austria), in 2012 in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), in 2014 in Hamburg (Germany) and in 2016 in Brussel (Belgium), the current edition will be held in the city of Tours (France) in the heart of the Loire Valley; a place reputed for science, magestic castles, and excellent wines.
Latest news:

01/09/2017: Submissions are now open
15/11/2017: Submission deadline extended up to 01/12/2017

Important dates:

1st september 2017: submissions open
15th november 2017: submissions close
1st december 2017: submissions close
15th february 2018: notifications
1st march 2018: camera ready papers
1st April 2018: early bird registration closes
18th-20th june 2018: workshop

EU/ME 2018 Geneva
2018-03-22 - 2018-03-23 | University of Geneva, Boulevard du Pont-d'Arve 40, Geneve, 1205, Switzerland
The 19th EU/ME workshop on metaheuristics for industry will take place in Geneva, Switzerland, on March 22 and 23, 2018.
This workshop aims to bring together researchers from all over the world interested in discussing the latest progress in the field of metaheuristic optimization.
The workshop will be free of charge but registration is requested.
More information can be found on the website: eume2018.ch.

Contact person: marie-sklaerder.vie@unige.ch

Metaheuristics stream @ IFORS 2017
2017-07-17 - 2017-07-21 | Québec City Convention Centre, Boulevard René-Lévesque, Quebec, Quebec, QC G1A 1B4, Canada
Dear friends and colleagues,
We are organizing the Metaheuristics/Matheuristics Stream of the forthcoming IFORS conference in Quebec, Canada July 17-21, 2017.
http://ifors2017.ca/
The stream is organized by EU/ME – the metaheuristics community (http://metaheuristics.eu).
If you would like to submit a paper in the Metaheuristics Stream, please visit
https://www.euro-online.org/conf/ifors2017/
and use invitation code f1b3e4cd
The deadline for abstract submission will be postponed to the end of the month, February 28, 2017.
If (even better!) you would like to organize a full session of 3-4 papers, please contact me directly.
Best regards
Marc Sevaux – Université de Bretagne-Sud
marc.sevaux@univ-ubs.fr

EU/ME 2017 - metaheuristics for a better world
2017-04-03 - 2017-04-04 | IASI-CNR, Via dei Taurini 19, Roma, 00185, Italy
The 18th EU/ME workshop on metaheuristics for a better world will take place in Rome, Italy, on April 3 and 4, 2017.
EU/ME 2017 will be hosted by IASI-CNR, the Istituto di Analisi dei Sistemi ed Informatica, part of Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche.
This workshop aims to bring together researchers from all over the world interested in discussing the latest progress in the field of metaheuristic optimization.
