Keynote Speakers

We are delighted to announce that Carola Doerr and Carlos M. Fonseca will be our keynote speakers.

Pr. Carola Doerr, Sorbonne University, France

Talk: On using Reinforcement Learning for parameter control in Evolutionary Computation

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a powerful procedure for identifying suitable actions for the states that an algorithm may traverse during its execution. RL has been successfully applied to game playing and robotics. In this presentation we survey attempts to deploy different RL approaches to control hyper-parameters of evolutionary computation methods. We demonstrate that off-the-shelf methods do not seem to capture characteristics of black-box optimization processes. We then identify different strategies to address these shortcomings.

Biography:Caroloa Doerr, formerly Winzen, is a CNRS research director at Sorbonne Université in Paris, France and scientific advisor for the CNRS informatics institute. Carola's main research activities are in the analysis of black-box optimization algorithms, both by mathematical and by empirical means. She is also passionate about applications of iterative search algorithms in practice, be it in industrial or in academic contexts. Carola is associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, ACM Transactions on Evolutionary Learning and Optimization (TELO), and the Evolutionary Computation journal. She was program chair for AutoML 2025, the BBSR track at GECCO 2025 and 2024, the GECH track at GECCO 2023, for PPSN 2020, FOGA 2019, and for the theory tracks of GECCO 2015 and 2017. She has organized several Dagstuhl seminars and Lorentz Center workshops. Together with Pascal Kerschke, Carola leads the 'Algorithm selection and configuration' working group of COST action CA22137. Carola's works have been distinguished by several awards, among them the CNRS bronze medal, the Otto Hahn Medal of the Max Planck Society, and best paper awards at GECCO, CEC, and EvoApplications.

Pr. Carlos M. Fonseca, University of Coimbra, Portugal

Talk: ...

Comming soon !

Biography: Carlos M. Fonseca is an Associate Professor in the Department of Informatics Engineering of the University of Coimbra, Portugal, and a member of the Adaptive Computation Group of CISUC, the Centre for Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra. He obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Sheffield, U.K., where he also conducted postdoctoral research. His main research interests are in multiobjective optimisation, evolutionary computation, experimental evaluation of optimisation algorithms, and practical applications of optimisation. His current focus is on preference articulation in multiobjective optimisation and on the computational modelling of optimisation problems. Since October 2023, he has served as Action Chair and Grant Holder Scientific Representative of COST Action Randomised Optimisation Algorithms Research Network (ROAR-NET), a European research and innovation network aimed at making randomised optimisation algorithms widely competitive in practice by identifying and reducing obstacles to their adoption at the scientific, technical, economic, and human levels.