1st Call for participation OBUPM-2001 OPTIMIZATION BY BUILDING AND USING PROBABILISTIC MODELS 2001 Bird-of-a-feather Workshop at the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference 2001 ( GECCO-2001 ) San Francisco, California, July 7 - 11, 2001 (Saturday - Wednesday) A recombination of the Sixth Annual Genetic Programming Conference (GP-2001) and the International Conference on Genetic Algorithms (ICGA-2001) organized by Martin Pelikan and Kumara Sastry to be held on Saturday, July 7, 2001 WORKSHOP SUMMARY Algorithms that replace two-parent recombination of genetic algorithms by building and simulating a probabilistic model of promising solutions have received much attention over the past years. The proposed methods resolve many problems of other evolutionary algorithms and are increasingly used to solve various problem of practical and theoretical importance. Theory was designed to understand the dynamics of the algorithms as well as their limits. The purpose of this workshop is to - review and describe the basic principles of discussed methods, - present recent developments in the covered area of research, - discuss current problems and future directions of research in this area, and - encourage communication among active researchers in the area and other participants. The length of the workshop is 4 hours. The workshop will start by an introduction to the field by Martin Pelikan. This will be followed by about 5-7 presentations. The workshop will finish with a panel discussion. PARTICIPATION Presentations will be selected according to the submitted 10-page papers which will be reviewed by at least two members of the international program committee. Accepted papers will be available in electronic form before the workshop. Abbreviated versions of the papers will be later published in the workshop proceedings. The length of each paper will be determined by the number of accepted papers. For more detailed submission guidelines and recent updates, see the workshop pages at http://www-illigal.ge.uiuc.edu/obupm2001/index.html IMPORTANT DATES (subject to change) Paper submission deadline: February 15, 2001 Decisions will be mailed by: April 1, 2001 Submissions of camera-ready papers: April 20, 2001 WORKSHOP CHAIRS Martin Pelikan Illinois Genetic Algorithms Laboratory 117 Transportation Building 104 S. Mathews Ave. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Urbana, IL 61801 [log in to unmask] Tel/Fax: (217) 333-2346, (217) 244-5705 Kumara Sastry Illinois Genetic Algorithms Laboratory 117 Transportation Building 104 S. Mathews Ave. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Urbana, IL 61801 [log in to unmask] Tel/Fax: (217) 333-2346, (217) 244-5705 ATTENDANCE Attendance to the workshop is open to all GECCO attendees. Further information will be posted on the workshop web pages (www-illigal.ge.uiuc.edu/obupm2001/index.html) as it becomes available. We are looking forward to your participation at the second workshop OBUPM-2001 which is a great opportunity to meet and discuss the covered topics for researchers in this area of research as well as the ones who would like to learn more about using probabilistic models for a more powerful recombination. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%