CFP: OBUPM-2000 workshop at GECCO-2000

[Martin Pelikan <pelikan@illigal.ge.uiuc.edu>]

                    1st Call for participation

                            OBUPM-2000

                  OPTIMIZATION BY BUILDING AND USING
                      PROBABILISTIC MODELS 2000

                      Bird-of-a-feather Workshop

                            organized by

    Martin Pelikan, Heinz Muehlenbein, and Alberto Ochoa Rodriguez

                 to be held on Saturday, July 8, 2000
                               at the 

            Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference 2000
                           ( GECCO-2000 )

      Las Vegas, Nevada, July 8 - 12, 2000 (Saturday - Wednesday) 

                        A recombination of 
    the Fifth Annual Genetic Programming Conference (GP-2000) and 
    the International Conference on Genetic Algorithms (ICGA-2000) 

Recently, there has been a growing interest in evolutionary algorithms
that guide the exploration of the search space by building and using
probabilistic models of promising solutions (e.g. PBIL, cGA, UMDA,
BMDA, MIMIC, FDA, and BOA). These algorithms have shown to resolve a 
number of problems the conventional GAs experience great difficulties 
with and solve a number of difficult problems quickly, accurately, and 
reliably. The workshop invites discussion on general issues of research 
in this area, including (but not limited to): 

      - recent advances in the optimization by building and using
        probabilistic models 
      - theoretical and empirical results in the area 
      - application of the methods based on probabilistic modeling
        to real-world problems 
      - various probabilistic modeling techniques and their use in
        optimization 
      - promising directions of future research 

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. The workshop has 26 pages in the proceedings 
total.

IMPORTANT DATES 

Extended abstract submission deadline: February 1, 2000
Paper submission deadline:             February 15, 2000
Decisions will be mailed by:           April 1, 2000
Submissions of camera-ready papers:    April 20, 2000

For more detailed submission guidelines, see the workshop pages at
http://www-illigal.ge.uiuc.edu/obupm/index.html

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/obupm/index.html) as it becomes available.

We are looking forward to your participation at what promises to be
the biggest workshop in the area. Please contact the organizers for 
questions or suggestions regarding this workshop.

----------------------------------------------
 Martin Pelikan
 Illinois Genetic Algorithms Laboratory
 University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
 117 Transportation Building 
 104 S. Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801
 tel: (217) 333-2346, fax: (217) 244-5705
----------------------------------------------