IJCAI-01 Workshop

Stochastic Search Algorithms

Workshop Description   Important Dates  Paper Submission   Programme   Talks   Organisation  

Workshop Description

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 AI 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.

Workshop topics will include:

The organisers aim to create a forum for sharing and discussing the latest results as well as fundamental issues in this highly dynamic and fast growing area of AI research. This one day workshop is organised by Holger H. Hoos and Thomas Stützle; it is co-ordinated with the IJCAI-01 Workshop "Empirical Methods in Artificial Intelligence" and the IJCAI-01 Tutorial "Stochastic Search Algorithms" (also organised / presented by Holger H. Hoos and Thomas Stützle).

Important Dates (extended deadline)

Submission deadline:23 March 2001
Notification of acceptance: 9 April 2001
Camera-ready copy deadline:17 April 2001
Workshop:6 August 2001

Short statements of interest are especially welcome, but we will also consider technical papers.
We will try to have all papers submitted by the original deadline (28 February) reviewed according to the original schedule.

Paper Submissions

We ask authors to submit technical papers either in Postscript or PDF. 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. Submissions should be printed on 8.5" x 11" or A4 paper with at least 1 inch margins on all sides. 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. We strongly encourage authors to submit papers in IJCAI conference style (formatting instructions are available at http://ijcai.org/data).

To submit a paper, email it (or a URL pointer to it) to hoos@cs.ubc.ca or 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 that all workshop participants are expected to register for the main IJCAI-01 conference

Paper Presentations

Each paper that has been accepted for the workshop is allotted a 25min slot for a talk. Presenters are encouraged to prepare slightly more informal talks than for a conference, to encourage questions during the talk, and to leave at least 5, preferably 10 minutes of the 25min slot for discussion. For the presentations, an overhead projector and an LCD projector will be available. Presenters who plan on using the LCD projector are encouraged to bring backup hardcopies of their slides, in case of technical difficulties.

The preliminary workshop programme is now available here

Organisation / Contact Information

Holger H. Hoos (Co-chair)

University of British Columbia
Computer Science Department
2366 Main Mall
Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4
Canada

Phone: +1 (604) 822-1964
Fax: +1 (604) 822-5485
Email: hoos@cs.ubc.ca
WWW: http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hoos

Thomas Stützle (Co-chair)

Technische Universität Darmstadt
FG Intellektik, FB Informatik
Alexanderstr. 10
D-64283 Darmstadt
Germany

Phone: +49 (6151) 16-6651
Fax: +49 (6151) 16-5326
Email: stuetzle@informatik.tu-darmstadt.de
WWW: http://www.intellektik.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/~tom

Roberto Bayardo


IBM Almaden Research Center
650 Harry Rd. K55-B1
San Jose, CA 95120
USA

Phone: +1 (408) 927-1728
Fax: +1 (408) 927-3215
E-mail: bayardo@almaden.ibm.com
WWW: http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/people/bayardo

Marco Dorigo

Universite Libre de Bruxelles
IRIDIA CP 194/6
Avenue Franklin Roosevelt 50
1050 Bruxelles
Belgium

Phone: +32 2 6503169
Fax: +32-2-6502715
Email: mdorigo@ulb.ac.be
WWW: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~mdorigo

Henry Kautz

University of Washington
Dept. Computer Science & Engineering
Box 352350
Seattle, WA 98195-2350
USA

Phone: +1 (206) 543-1896
Fax: +1 (530) 430-3432 or +1 (206) 543-2969
E-mail: kautz@cs.washington.edu
WWW: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/kautz

Heinz Mühlenbein

GMD Forschungszentrum Informationstechnik
Institute for Autonomous intelligent Systems
Schloß Birlinghoven
53754 Sankt Augustin
Germany

Phone: +49 (0) 2241 14 2405
Fax: +49 (0) 2241 14 2618 or +49 (0) 2241 14 2889
E-mail: muehlenbein@gmd.de
WWW: http://ais.gmd.de/people/Heinz.Muehlenbein.html

Last modified: 7 July 2001