Connectionists: Generative and Developmental Systems at GECCO: Extension to January 31

[Michael E. Palmer]

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*** PAPER DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JAN 31, 2013
*** 2013 GENETIC AND EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION CONFERENCE (GECCO-2013)
*** Generative and Developmental Systems (GDS) Track
*** July 06-10, 2013, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
*** Organized by ACM SIGEVO
*** http://www.sigevo.org/gecco-2013
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EXTENSION ANNOUNCEMENT: the paper deadline has been extended to **
January 31 **


We invite you to submit your paper to the Generative and Developmental
Systems (GDS) track at GECCO 2013. The focus of the GDS track is making
artificially evolved systems scale to high complexity, with work ranging
from biologically inspired approaches to automated engineering design.
Each paper submitted to the GDS Track will be reviewed by experts in the
field. The size and prestige of the GECCO conference will allow many
researchers to learn about your work, both at the conference and via the
proceedings (GECCO has the highest impact rating of all conferences in
the field of Evolutionary Computation and Artificial Life).

TRACK DESCRIPTION
-----------------

The continuing growth in systems' size and complexity has rendered the
engineering traditions of rigid top-down planning and control
unsustainable. Understanding the evolution of natural complex systems -
large sets of elements interacting locally and giving rise to collective
behavior — can help create a new generation of truly autonomous and
adaptive artificial systems. Biological evolution has produced the
astounding complexity and diversity of living organisms based on random
mutations, nonrandom selection and self-organization. The Generative and
Developmental Systems (GDS) track seeks to unlock the full potential of
"in silico" evolution as a design methodology that can scale to systems
of great complexity. It aims to create complex and diverse artifacts
that meet our specifications with minimal guidance and programming effort.

Indirect and open-ended representations: Representing more than the
information needed to produce a single individual, the genotype is a
layered repository of many generations of evolutionary innovation, and
is shaped by two requirements: to be fit in the short term, and to be
evolvable over the long term through its influence on the production of
variation. "Indirect representations" such as morphogenesis or
string-rewriting grammars, which rely on developmental or generative
processes, may allow long-term improvement via accumulated elaborations
and emergent new features. "Direct representations" are not capable of
open-ended elaboration because they are restricted to predefined features.

Complex environments encourage complex phenotypes: While complex
genotypes are not necessarily favored in simple environments, they may
enable unprecedented phenotypes and behaviors that can later
successfully invade new, uncrowded niches in complex environments —
which can create pressure toward increasing complexity. Many factors may
affect environmental (hence genotypic) complexity, such as spatial
structure, temporal fluctuations, or competitive co-evolution.

More is more: Today's typical numbers of generations, sizes of
populations, and components inside individuals are still too small. Just
as physics needs higher-energy accelerators and farther-reaching
telescopes to understand matter and space-time, evolutionary computation
needs a strong boost in computational resolution and scope to understand
the spontaneous generation of complex functionality. Biological
evolution involved 4 billion years and untold numbers of organisms. We
expect that datacenter-scale computing power will be applied in the
future to produce artificially evolved artifacts of great complexity.
How will we apply such resources most efficiently?

Over 150 years after Darwin's and Mendel's work, and the subsequent
"Modern Synthesis" of evolution and genetics, the developmental process
that maps genotype to phenotype is still poorly understood. Yet,
development cannot remain an abstraction if we wish to encourage
open-ended evolutionary novelty in artificial systems. The GDS track at
GECCO 2013 seeks to understand the full evolution-of-development
("evo-devo") picture. It stresses the importance of the generative and
developmental processes that generate the raw material for selection;
such representations are uniquely capable of producing ongoing,
open-ended innovation.

We invite all papers related to the evolution of complexity, including
in the areas of:
* artificial development, artificial embryogeny
* evo-devo robotics, morphogenetic robotics
* evolution of evolvability
* gene regulatory networks
* grammar-based systems, generative systems, rewriting systems
* indirect mappings, compact encodings, novel representations
* measures of complexity, theories of scalable design
* morphogenetic engineering
* neural development, neuroevolution, augmenting topologies
* spatial computing, amorphous computing

Additionally, papers in the following areas will be considered if they
have a particular focus on representations and/or scaling to high
complexity:
* competitive co-evolution (arms races)
* complex, spatially structured, and dynamically changing environments
* diversity preservation, novelty search
* large numbers of generations, individuals, and internal components
* unconventional computing, natural computing, organic computing
* synthetic biology, biological and chemical IT, artificial chemistry

VENUE
-----

The track and conference will be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

IMPORTANT DATES
---------------

* January 31, 2013 - Paper submission deadline (FINAL deadline)
* April 17, 2013 - Camera-ready version of accepted articles
* July 06-10, 2013 - GECCO 2013 Conference in Amsterdam

FOR MORE INFORMATION
--------------------

More information on the GDS track is at: http://iscpif.fr/gds2013
and on the GECCO conference at: http://www.sigevo.org/gecco-2013

To submit your paper to the GDS track, visit
http://www.sigevo.org/gecco-2013/papers.html

We look forward to reading your paper.

-- Michael Palmer, René Doursat, and Joshua Bongard, GDS track chairs