NIPS96 optimization workshop

[Arun Jagota]

This is an announcement and call for participation. Those interested
in the topic and wishing to contribute a half-hour talk (some slots are 
open) may e-mail me a title and brief abstract. Or stop by at the venue
and participate in other ways.

Arun Jagota

          Nature Inspired Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization

		      NIPS*96 Postconference Workshop
	       December 7, Saturday, 1996, Snowmass, Colorado
                          7:30-10:30 AM, 4-7 PM
	      Organizer: Arun Jagota, jagota at cse.ucsc.edu

The 1980s was a decade of intense activity in the application of nature 
inspired methods for the approximate solution of difficult combinatorial 
optimization problems. Many such problems are NP-hard, yet need to be 
solved (at least approximately) in real-world applications. This workshop 
will discuss the application of four nature inspired paradigms to 
combinatorial optimization: neural nets, evolutionary computing, methods 
rooted in physics, and DNA biocomputing. The workshop will consist of talks 
and discussions. The talks will present snap-shots of the state-of-the-art 
in these areas; the discussions will focus on common themes and differences 
across them.

FORMAT: Eight 30 minute talks; two 60 minute discussions. Some elasticity
possible.

One of the discussions is intended to focus on conceptual comparisons:
common themes, differences, relative strengths and weaknesses. The other
discussion on benchmarks to facilitate cross-paradigm comparisons.

SPEAKERS:

Shumeet Baluja		TBA
CMU

Jan van den Berg	Physics-Based Neural Optimization Methods
Erasmus U, Rotterdam

Max Garzon		The Reliability of DNA based Solutions to Optimization  
U of Memphis

Arun Jagota		Heuristic Primal-Target NN Methods on Some Hypergraph
UCSC			Problems
 
Juergen Quittek		Balancing Graph Mappings by Self-Organization
ICSI

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