WORKSHOP ON

    Self-organization in Representations for Evolutionary Algorithms:
                    Building complexity from simplicity
                   http://ivan.research.ucf.edu/SOEA.htm

                       to be held as part of the
          Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO)
                        Seattle, Washington USA
                 June 26-30, 2004 (Saturday - Wednesday)
                    http://www.isgec.org/gecco-2004/

* Papers submission deadline EXTENDED: April 16, 2004 *

The success of evolutionary algorithms in a wide range of otherwise
intractable problems has promoted its use. As evolutionary algorithms
are applied to increasingly difficult problems that require increasingly
complex solutions, they face a number of problems: premature convergence
to suboptimal solutions, stagnation of search in large search spaces,
negative epistatic effects, disruption of large building blocks, among
others. Natural evolution, on the other hand, seems to not have any
problem evolving strikingly complex self-organized solutions.
Self-organization is present in almost every level of natural
evolution: gene regulation networks, proteins interaction networks,
metabolic pathways, cellular organization, etc; but it is not usually
present in evolutionary algorithms. Nature evolves instructions that
produce organisms by a process of self-organization. Perhaps the
self-organization of genotypic instructions into phenotypes is a key
missing ingredient necessary for unleashing the evolution of complex
and scalable solutions with emergent phenomena such as: scale-free-ness,
adaptability, innovation, evolvability, and robustness. This workshop
will focus on domain-independent methods for representing complex
solutions with relatively simple self-organizable building blocks.

Topics of interest include (not limited to)

* Models of complexity building using self-organization
* Self-organized development: embryogenesis, growth
* Emergent behavior in representations
* Methods of fitness assignment for self-organized individuals
  (the price of non-programmability)
* Methods of design and evaluation of self-organizable building blocks
* Scalability of self-organizational processes to high complexities
* Self-organization theoretical approaches: complexity, chaos, synergetics,
  self-organized criticality, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, etc.
* Artificial self-organized systems
* NFL: what can we trade to get complexity and scalability in solutions?

Workshop Format

This workshop seeks to bring together researchers from diverse problem
domains to informally discuss issues related to the representation of
complex solutions using self-organization of simple building blocks
for evolutionary algorithms in particular, and the issue of building
complexity from simplicity in general. We plan to have a series of
short technical presentations followed by a panel discussion.
We welcome technical papers describing completed or on-going research
as well as position papers outlining current research issues,
approaches or research agendas. We also welcome suggestions to panel
discussions. Preprints will be circulated by email prior to the meeting.

Workshop Submission Instructions:

Please submit proposed contributions via email to [log in to unmask]
in PS or PDF format by April 16th. Contributions can vary from one-page
position statements up to full twelve-page camera-ready papers. Accepted
contributions will be published in the GECCO-2004 workshops proceedings.

Important Dates

Papers Due: April 16, 2004 (April 28 for one-page position statements)
Acceptance notices: April 19, 2004
Camera Ready: April 28, 2004
Workshop: June 27, 2004

Organizers:
 Ivan I. Garibay, Greg Holifield and Annie S. Wu
 Evolutionary Computation Laboratory - University of Central Florida

For more information, comments or suggestions please email Ivan Garibay
at [log in to unmask] or visit http://ivan.research.ucf.edu/SOEA.htm