Workshop on
Stochastic Search Algorithms

NEW: Preliminary workshop schedule and information for presenters

Stochastic search algorithms strongly use randomised decisions while searching for solutions to a given problem. They play an increasingly important role for practically solving hard combinatorial problems from various domains of Artificial Intelligence and Operations Research, such as satisfiability, constraint satisfaction, planning, scheduling, and many application areas. Over the past few years there has been considerable success in developing stochastic local search algorithms as well as randomised systematic search methods for solving these problems, and to date, for many problem domains, the best known algorithms are based on stochastic search techniques. The increasing relevance and popularity of these methods in AI are reflected by a growing number of publications in journals, such as Artificial Intelligence and the Journal of Automated Reasoning, and at major AI conferences, such as IJCAI, ECAI, and AAAI.

This workshop will bring together researchers from different areas of AI and Operations Research in order to discuss various topics in stochastic search techniques, including the following:

• stochastic local search algorithms
• randomised systematic search methods
• design and implementation of stochastic search algorithms
• metaheuristics, learning techniques, and self-tuning algorithms
• parallelisation and portfolios of stochastic search algorithms
• empirical analysis and evaluation of stochastic search algorithms
• theoretical results on stochastic search algorithms
• new applications of stochastic search

Submission Instructions

We ask authors to submit technical papers either in Postscript or PDF format. Every participant is expected to submit at least a 1-page statement of interest.

Technical papers should address one or more of the workshop topics (see above). The papers should be reasonably concise; we expect that about 4-6 pages in IJCAI conference style will suffice for technical papers, but you may use more space if you need it. Papers are to be submitted in IJCAI conference style (preferably using Latex). The first page of the paper should include the title, a brief abstract, and author names, affiliations, postal addresses, electronic mail addresses, and telephone and fax numbers.

To submit a paper, email it (or a URL pointer to it) to hoos@cs.ubc.ca and stuetzle@informatik.tu-darmstadt.de.

The number of participants is limited; participants will be selected based on the submitted papers and statements of interest. All participants are expected to contribute to the discussions in the workshop.

Note: Participants are expected to register for the main IJCAI conference in addition to the workshop.

Important Dates and Deadlines

• Extended deadline for the submission of full papers (4 to 6 pages) or statements of interest (1 page): 2003/04/11.
• Notification of acceptance/rejection: 2003/05/05.
• Deadline for the receipt of camera-ready papers: 2003/05/11.

Organizing Committee

Prof. Holger H. Hoos (Co-chair)
Department of Computer Science
University of British Columbia
2366 Main Mall
Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4
Canada
hoos@cs.ubc.ca
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hoos

Dr. Thomas Stützle (Co-chair)
Fachhbereich Informatik
Technische Universität Darmstadt
Alexanderstr.10
64283 Darmstadt
Germany
stuetzle@informatik.tu-darmstadt.de
http://www.intellektik.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/~tom/

Program Committee

Joe Culberson, University of Alberta, Canada

Ian Gent, University of St Andrews, UK

Henry Kautz, University of Washington, USA

Peter Merz, Universität Tübingen, Germany

Andrew Parkes, University of Oregon, USA

Irina Rish, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, USA