Connectionists: CFP: Generative and Developmental Systems (GDS) track at GECCO 2014

Mon Jan 6 14:49:42 EST 2014

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*** CALL FOR PAPERS

*** 2014 GENETIC AND EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION CONFERENCE (GECCO-2014)

*** Generative and Developmental Systems (GDS) Track

*** July 12-16, 2014 in Vancouver, BC, Canada

*** Organized by ACM SIGEVO

*** http://www.sigevo.org/gecco-2014

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Deadlines coming up - required abstracts due Jan 15, papers due Jan 29 - no
extensions this year!

We invite you to submit your paper to the Generative and Developmental
Systems (GDS) track at GECCO 2014. 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

---------------------------

As artificial systems (of hardware, software and networks) continue to grow
in size and complexity, the engineering traditions of rigid top-down
planning and control are reaching the limits of their applicability. In
contrast, biological evolution is responsible for the apparently unbounded
complexity and diversity of living organisms. Yet, 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. Understanding the evolution of
complex systems - large sets of elements interacting locally and giving
rise to collective behavior - will help us create a new generation of truly
autonomous and adaptive artificial systems. The Generative and
Developmental Systems (GDS) track seeks to unlock the full potential of in
silico evolution as a design methodology that can "scale up" to systems of
great complexity, meeting our specifications with minimal manual
programming effort. Both qualitative and quantitative advances toward this
long-term goal will be welcomed.
Indirect and open-ended representations: The genotype is more than the
information needed to produce a single individual. It is a layered
repository of many generations of evolutionary innovation, 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
improvements to the "genetic architecture" via accumulated layers of
elaboration, and emergent new features. In contrast, "direct
representations" are not capable of open-ended elaboration because they are
restricted to predefined features.Complex environments encourage complex
phenotypes: While complex genotypes may not be required for success in
simple environments, they may enable unprecedented phenotypes and behaviors
that can later successfully invade new, uncrowded niches in complex
environments; this can create pressure toward increasing complexity over
the long term. 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 like physics needs higher-energy accelerators and
farther-reaching telescopes to understand matter and space-time,
evolutionary computation needs a boost in computational power to understand
the generation of complex functionality. Biological evolution involved 4
billion years and untold numbers of organisms. Nature could afford to be
"wasteful", but we cannot. 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 to
"scale up" to high complexity?How should we measure evolved complexity?:
The GDS track has recently added a new focus: defining quantitative metrics
of evolved complexity. (Which is more complex - a mouse, or a stegosaurus?)
The evolutionary computing community is badly in need of such metrics,
which may be theoretical (e.g., Kolmogorov complexity) or more practical.
Ideally, such metrics will be applicable across multiple problem domains
and genetic architectures; however, any efforts will be welcomed. We
encourage authors to submit papers on these quantitative metrics, which
will be given special attention by the track chairs this year.

The GDS track invites all papers addressing open-ended evolution,
including, but not limited to, 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
   -

   morphogenetic engineering
   -

   neural development, neuroevolution, augmenting topologies
   -

   synthetic biology, artificial chemistry
   -

   spatial computing, amorphous computing
   -

   competitive co-evolution (arms races)
   -

   complex, spatially structured, and dynamically changing environments
   -

   diversity preservation, novelty search
   -

   efficiently "scaling up" to large numbers of generations, individuals,
   and internal components
   -

   measures of evolved complexity (theoretical, or practical)

VENUE
-----------The track and conference will be held in Vancouver, BC,
Canada.IMPORTANT
DATES

---------------------------

   -

   Abstract submission: January 15, 2014 (required, new for 2014!)
   -

   Submission of full papers: January 29, 2014 (NO extensions this year)
   -

   Notification of paper acceptance: March 12, 2014
   -

   Camera ready submission: April 14, 2014
   -

   Advance registration: May 2, 2014
   -

   Conference: July 12-16, 2014 in Vancouver, BC, Canada

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

Please see the GDS 2014 website <http://www.mepalmer.net/gds2014>,
http://www.mepalmer.net/gds2014, or email the GDS co-chairs, Michael Palmer
(mepalmer at charles.stanford.edu) and Sebastian Risi (sebastian.risi at gmail.com
).

Or you can join the GDS Google
Group<https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gds-gecco>,
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gds-gecco,  to see the latest
updates.

-- 
Dr. Sebastian Risi
Assistant Professor
IT University of Copenhagen, Room 5D08
Rued Langgaards Vej 7, 2300 Copenhagen, Denmark
email: sebastian.risi at gmail.com, web: http://www.cs.ucf.edu/~risi/
mobile: +45-50250355, office: +45-7218-5127
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