Parallel Problem Solving from Nature
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.
| Parallel Problem Solving from Nature | |
|---|---|
| Status | Active |
| Genre | Conference |
| Frequency | Biannually |
| Inaugurated | 1990 |
| Most recent | 2018 |
| Previous event | 2016 |
| Next event | 2020 |
| Area | Europe |
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.[1]
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, eleven 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), and Coimbra (September 8-12, 2018).
The current edition will be held in Leiden from 5 to 9 September 2020, with 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 are Proceedings Chairs and Anna Esparcia-Alcázar, Ofer Shir and Vanessa Volz are Workshops, Tutorials and Competitions Chairs, respectively and Anna Kononova as Local Chair.
Proceedings
Proceedings of PPSN are published by Springer in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series.
- 2018 LNCS 11101 [2]
External links
References
- Günter Rudolph's PPSN page at TU Dortmund, https://ls11-www.cs.tu-dortmund.de/rudolph/ppsn [accessed Jul 24 2020]
- 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