[Swarm-Modelling] GECCO Workshop: ECoMASS 2008

[Bill Rand]

- C A L L F O R P A P E R S - C A L L F O R P A P E R S -

WORKSHOP ON
Evolutionary Computation and Multi-Agent Systems
and Simulation Workshop (ECoMASS-2008)

to be held as part of the

2008 GENETIC AND EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION CONFERENCE (GECCO-2008)

July 12-16, 2008 (Saturday-Wednesday)
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Organized by ACM SIGEVO
www.sigevo.org/gecco-2008/

PAPER SUBMISSION DEADLINE FOR WORKSHOP: MARCH 21, 2008

Workshop URL: http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~sevan/ecomass08/

----------------------------------------------------------
Evolutionary computation (EC) and multi-agent systems and simulation
(MASS) both involve populations of agents. EC is a learning technique
by which a population of individual agents adapt according to the
selection pressures exerted by an environment; MASS seeks to
understand how to coordinate the actions of a population of (possibly
selfish) autonomous agents that share an environment so that some
outcome is achieved. Both EC and MASS have top-down and bottom-up
features. For example, some aspects of multi-agent system engineering
(e.g., mechanism design) are concerned with how top-down structure can
constrain or influence individual decisions. Similarly, most work in
EC is concerned with how to engineer selective pressures to drive the
evolution of individual behavior towards some desired goal.
Multi-agent simulation (also called agent-based modeling) addresses
the bottom-up issue of how collective behavior emerges from individual
action. Likewise, the study of evolutionary dynamics within EC (for
example in coevolution) often considers how population-level phenomena
emerge from individual-level interactions. Thus, at a high level, we
may view EC and MASS as examining and utilizing analogous processes.
It is therefore natural to consider how knowledge gained within EC may
be relevant to MASS, and vice versa; indeed, applications and
techniques from one field have often made use of technologies and
algorithms from the other field. Studying EC and MASS in combination
is warranted and has the potential to contribute to both fields.

The goal of this workshop is to facilitate the examination and
development of techniques at the intersection of evolutionary
computation and multi-agent systems and simulation.

The ECoMASS workshop welcomes original submissions on all aspects of
Evolutionary Computation and Multi-Agent Systems and Simulation, which
include (but are not limited to) the followign topics and themes:

-Multi-agent systems and agent-based models utilizing evolutionary
computation
-Optimization of multi-agent systems and agent-based models using
evolutionary computation
-Evolutionary computation models which rely not on explicit fitness
functions but rather implicit fitness functions defined by the
relationship to other individuals / agents
-Applications utilizing MASS and EC in combination
-Biological agent-based models (usually called individual-based
models) involving evolution
-Evolution of cooperation and altruism
-Genotypic representation of the complex phenotypic strategies of MASS
-Evolutionary learning within MASS (including Baldwinian learning and
phenotypic plasticity)
-Emergence and feedbacks
-Open-ended strategy spaces and evolution
-Adaptive individuals within evolving populations

*Paper Submission
See http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~sevan/ecomass08/ for details.

*Important Dates
Paper submission deadline: 21 March, 2008
Notification of acceptance: 2 April, 2008

*Workshop Chairs:
Sevan Ficici, Harvard University
William Rand, Northwestern University
Rick Riolo, University of Michigan