Dear colleagues,

did you miss the deadline for BBOB special session at IEEE CEC?
Submit your results to BBOB workshop @ GECCO 2015!

Deadline is approaching quickly, but as the framework 
provides a lot of support (automated table/figure generation,
latex templates), there is still time to measure your favourite
(or not so favourite) algorithms.

To be notified about release of the code and documents, 
please send us an email at [log in to unmask], we will include you 
in our mailing list. 

Don't hesitate to forward this message to possibly interested people.

Thanks,
BBOBies

================
GECCO-BBOB: BLACK-BOX OPTIMIZATION BENCHMARKING @ GECCO 2015
Workshop on Unbounded Real-Parameter Blackbox Optimization

to be held as part of the

2015 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2015)
July 11-15, 2015, Madrid, Spain

Organized by ACM SIGEVO
http://www.sigevo.org/gecco-2015
================

Benchmarking of optimization algorithms is crucial to assess 
performance of optimizers quantitatively, understand weaknesses
and strengths of each algorithm and is the compulsory path 
to test new algorithm designs. 

A thorough benchmarking methodology has been defined in [1] 
and is implemented within the COCO framework 
(http://coco.gforge.inria.fr/) that furnishes most of 
the tedious tasks of benchmarking for the participants:
* choice of well-motivated single-objective benchmark functions 
  and their implementation in Matlab, C, Java, R, and Python,
* design of an experimental set-up,
* generation of data output, and
* post-processing and presentation of the results in graphs and
  tables (up to already prepared LaTeX templates for writing papers).

Note that for the GECCO-BBOB-2015 workshop, we provide 
essentially the same test-suite as in the previous editions
of BBOB held at GECCO. We provide 2 testbeds,
* noise-free and 
* noisy,
and we distinguish between 
* an expensive optimization scenario (where a focus on the first 
  100D function evaluations is assumed) and 
* a general scenario for which we do not limit the maximal number 
  of function evaluations made. 
The participants can freely choose any or all of them. We entirely 
ban different parameter settings for different test functions and 
encourage analyses that study the impact of parameter setting changes.

[1] Real-Parameter Black-Box Optimization Benchmarking: Experimental Setup, 
http://coco.lri.fr/downloads/download13.09/bbobdocexperiment.pdf.


Scope
=====
We encourage any submission that is concerned with black-box
optimization benchmarking of continuous optimizers, for example 
papers that:
* decribe and benchmark new or not-so-new algorithms on the 
  BBOB-2015 testbed,
* compare new or existing algorithms from the COCO database, or 
* analyze the data obtained in previous editions of BBOB. 

Similarly to the BBOB-2013 edition, we also focus on benchmarking 
optimization algorithms for expensive optimization (with limited 
budget) which especially invites to benchmark surrogate-assisted 
algorithms (e.g. based on kriging, support vector machines etc.). 
Participants are also encouraged to use the existing database for 
statistical analyses or for designing a portfolio of algorithms.


Organisation of the workshop during the conference
=============================================================
During the workshop, algorithms and results will be presented 
by the participants. An overall analysis and comparison will be 
accomplished by the organizers and all submitted papers will be 
critically reviewed as for any other GECCO-2015 paper. A planned 
plenary discussion on future improvements will, among others, 
address the question, of how the testbed should evolve.


Support Material and Downloads
==============================
All the support material needed to benchmark your algorithm(s), 
process the results, and compile the final papers are available 
at the GECCO-BBOB-2015 page 
(http://coco.gforge.inria.fr/doku.php?id=cec-bbob-2015).


Important dates
===============
    03/01: code released
    04/03: submission deadline
    04/20: acceptance notification
    05/04: final paper version due
    07/11 or 07/12: workshop at GECCO-2015


Contact and Mailing List
========================
Subscribe to our discussion mailing list by following this link 
http://lists.lri.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/bbob-discuss.

To receive announcement about the workshop, send an email 
to the BBOB team at bbob_at_lri.fr with title 
"register to BBOB announcement list".


Organization Committee
======================
Youhei Akimoto, Shinshu University, Nagano, Japan
Anne Auger, Inria Saclay - Ile-de-France, Orsay, France
Dimo Brockhoff, Inria Lille - Nord Europe, Villeneuve d'Ascq, France
Nikolaus Hansen, Inria Saclay - Ile-de-France, Orsay, France
Olaf Mersmann, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany
Petr Posik, Czech Technical University, Prague, Czech Republic