Parallel Problem Solving from Nature

Parallel Problem Solving from Nature
Student helpers ready for PPSN 2016 in Edinburgh
Status	Active
Genre	Conference
Frequency	Biannually
Years active	34
Inaugurated	1990 (1990)
Founders	Bernard Manderick, Reinhard Männer, Heinz Mühlenbein and Hans-Paul Schwefel
Most recent	2020
Previous event	2018
Next event	2022
Area	Europe
Website	https://ppsn2020.liacs.leidenuniv.nl

Parallel Problem Solving from Nature, or PPSN, is a conference originally designed to bring together researchers and practitioners in the field of natural computing, the study of computing approaches which are gleaned from natural models. Today, the conference series has evolved and welcomes works on all types of iterative optimization heuristics. It also welcomes submissions on connections between search heuristics and machine learning or other artificial intelligence approaches.

Other conferences in the area include the ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO), the IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) and EvoStar (Evo*).

In 2020 PPSN got a CORE rank of A.

History

The idea behind PPSN emerged around 1989-1990 when Bernard Manderick, Reinhard Männer, Heinz Mühlenbein, and Hans-Paul Schwefel, realised they shared a common field of study that was not covered by the conferences on Operations Research, Physics, or Computer Science they attended regularly.

The field of Genetic Algorithms had already been established in the form of the ICGA conference in 1985, but the "fathers" of PPSN wanted a wider focus, with algorithms that included problem solving, parallel computing and the use of natural metaphors (such as Darwinian evolution or Boltzmann dynamics).

The success of the first PPSN event at Dortmund encouraged its organisers to start a biennial conference series, as a European counterpart to the American-based ICGA (which in 1999 merged with the Genetic Programming conference to give rise to GECCO).

Analogies to natural processes included the thermodynamic process of annealing, immune systems and neural networks, as well as other paradigms, with Darwinian evolution being by far the most frequently used metaphor.

In this way, evolutionary algorithms and evolutionary computation became the common denominator for the PPSN approach to problem solving by mimicking evolutionary principles like population, birth and death, mutation, recombination, and natural selection.

Editions

So far, sixteen PPSN conferences have been held: Dortmund (October 1–3, 1990), Brussels (September 28–30, 1992), Jerusalem (October 9–14, 1994), Berlin (September 22–26, 1996), Amsterdam (September 27–30, 1998), Paris (September 16–20, 2000), Granada (September 7–11, 2002), Birmingham (September 18–22, 2004), Reykjavik (September 9–13, 2006), Dortmund (September 13–17, 2008), Krakow (September 11–15, 2010), Taormina (Sicily) (September 1-5, 2012), Ljubljana (September 13-17, 2014), Edinburgh (September 17-21, 2016), Coimbra (September 8-12, 2018) and Leiden (September 5-9, 2020).

The latest edition, held in Leiden, counted on Thomas Bäck and Mike Preuss as General Chairs and Carola Doerr, Michael Emmerich and Heike Trautmann as Programme Committee Chairs. André Deutz and Hao Wang were Proceedings Chairs and Anna Esparcia-Alcázar, Ofer Shir and Vanessa Volz were Workshops, Tutorials and Competitions Chairs, respectively and Anna Kononova was Local Chair.

Proceedings

Proceedings of PPSN are published by Springer in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series.

• Parallel Problem Solving from Nature – PPSN XVI 16th International Conference, PPSN 2020, Leiden, The Netherlands, September 5-9, 2020, Proceedings, Part I. Thomas Bäck, Mike Preuss, André Deutz, Hao Wang, Carola Doerr, Michael Emmerich, Heike Trautmann.Lecture Notes in Computer Science 12269, 2020, ISBN 978-3-030-58112-1, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-58112-1

• Parallel Problem Solving from Nature – PPSN XV. 15th International Conference, Coimbra, Portugal, September 8–12, 2018, Proceedings, Part I. Anne Auger, Carlos M. Fonseca, Nuno Lourenço, Penousal Machado, Luís Paquete, Darrell Whitley (Eds.) 2020, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 11101, 2018, ISBN 978-3-319-99253-2, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-99253-2

• Parallel Problem Solving from Nature – PPSN XIV 14th International Conference, Edinburgh, UK, September 17-21, 2016, Proceedings. Julia Handl, Emma Hart, Peter R. Lewis, Manuel López-Ibáñez, Gabriela Ochoa, Ben Paechter, Conference proceedings PPSN 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 9921. ISBN 978-3-319-45823-6 doi:10.1007/978-3-319-45823-6

• Parallel Problem Solving from Nature – PPSN XIII13th International Conference, Ljubljana, Slovenia, September 13-17, 2014. Proceedings. Thomas Bartz-Beielstein, Jürgen Branke, Bogdan Filipič, Jim Smith. Conference proceedings PPSN 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, volume 8672) ISBN 978-3-319-10762-2 doi:10.1007/978-3-319-10762-2

• Parallel Problem Solving from Nature - PPSN XII, 12th International Conference, Taormina, Italy, September 1-5, 2012, Proceedings, Part I. Carlos A. Coello Coello, Vincenzo Cutello, Kalyanmoy Deb, Stephanie Forrest, Giuseppe Nicosia, Mario Pavone. Conference proceedings PPSN 2012. Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, volume 7491) doi:10.1007/978-3-642-32937-1

External links

• [1] PPSN XVI in Leiden, 2020
• [2] PPSN XV in Coimbra, 2018
• [3] PPSN XIV in Edinburgh, 2016
• [4] PPSN XIII in Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2014
• [5] PPSN XII in Taormina, Sicily, 2012
• [6] PPSN XI in Krakow, 2010
• [7] PPSN X in Dortmund, 2008
• [8] PPSN VIII in Birmingham, 2004

Keynote speakers

1998	2000	2002 Alexander Nareyek, Roderic Guigó and William Hart	2004 Mandyam V. Srinivasan, Benjamin W. Wah and C. Lee Giles
2006	2008 Levent Tunçel, Thomas Breitling and Arndt von Haeseler	2010 Jon Garibaldi, Zbigniew Michalewicz and Darrell Whitley	2012
2014 Jadran Lenarčič, Thomas Bäck, A. E. (Gusz) Eiben,	2016 Susan Stepney, Josh Bongard and Andrew Philippides	2018 Ahmed Elgammal, Francis Heylighen and Kurt Mehlhorn	2020 Eric Postma, Carme Torras and Christian Stöcker