CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

"The Next Ten Years of Scheduling Research". A Workshop at GECCO 2001,
San Francisco, 7th July 2001

Peter Cowling and Graham Kendall are organising a workshop at GECCO2001
that will invite researchers to hear from and exchange views with a
panel of leading experts in scheduling research, as to how scheduling
research should and will develop over the next ten years. The workshop
will explore issues such as: new scheduling problems that will arise
through advances in information and telecommunications technology,
advances in heuristics for complex scheduling problems, the major
challenges for scheduling theory, methods for widening the scheduling
user community, advanced tools for modelling of scheduling problems etc.

WORKSHOP OUTLINE

1) A plenary presentation by Stephen Smith (Director of the Intelligent
Coordination and Logistics Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University).

2) A number of shorter semi-plenary presentations by members of the
workshop programme committee (given below), which is composed of leading
members of the scheduling research community.

3) A discussion of the next ten years of scheduling research, led by a
workshop programme committee of leading scheduling researchers.

Due to the need to allocate space to this (and other) workshops at
GECCO2001 we would like those people who would like to attend this
session to preregister by sending an e-mail to Graham Kendall
([log in to unmask]).

More details of the workshop are at the workshop website:
http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gxk/gecco2001/

WORKSHOP PROGRAMME COMMITTEE CO-CHAIRS:
Peter Cowling, University of Nottingham
Graham Kendall, University of Nottingham

WORKSHOP PROGRAMME COMMITTEE:
Edmund Burke, University of Nottingham
Ed Coffman, Columbia University
Peter Fleming, University of Sheffield
Martin Middendorf, University of Karlsruhe
David Montana, BBN Corporation
Colin Reeves, Coventry University
Wolfgang Slany, Technical University of Vienna
Stephen Smith, Carnegie Mellon University
Gil Syswerda, i2 Technologies
Edward Tsang, University of Essex


WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

This workshop will allow those attending to discuss how scheduling
research can be advanced in the next ten years. There are many
techniques that have been reported in the literature that have produced
excellent results when applied to scheduling problems, for example the
use of meta-heuristic techniques (such as tabu search and simulated
annealing) and evolutionary techniques (such as genetic and memetic
algorithms). One emerging research area is to develop heuristics that
operate at a higher level of generality than current technology can
support. This will involve advances in heuristics, meta-heuristics and
an emerging technique tentatively called a hyperheuristic. Another
interesting idea is to use an "adaptive" heuristic, which modifies its
behaviour as the search progresses. Through this workshop we hope to
achieve three main aims: allow the delegates to learn about some of the
latest techniques and ideas that are being applied by leading
researchers in the scheduling community, invite other researchers to
present their ideas as to how the field should and will develop in the
next ten years (not their current research but new, blue sky ideas that
can lead the research in the near future) and promote discussion on
these ideas so that the scheduling community as a whole can benefit.


--
Dr. Peter Cowling
University of Nottingham
School of Computer Science and IT
Room C78
Jubilee Campus
Nottingham NG8 1BB
UK
tel:   (0115) 9514215
fax:   (0115) 9514254
email: [log in to unmask]
WWW:   http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~pic