Call for Papers CEC2015 Special Session "Unbounded Real-Parameter Blackbox Optimization"

Special Session for IEEE CEC 2015.

Benchmarking of optimization algorithms is crucial to assess performance of optimizers quantitatively, understand weaknesses and strengths of each algorithm and is the compulsory path to test new algorithm designs.

A thorough benchmarking methodology has been defined in [1] and is implemented within the COCO framework (http://coco.gforge.inria.fr/) that furnishes most of the tedious tasks of benchmarking for the participants:

• choice of well-motivated single-objective benchmark functions and their implementation in Matlab, C, Java, R, and Python,
• design of an experimental set-up,
• generation of data output, and
• post-processing and presentation of the results in graphs and tables (up to already prepared LaTeX templates for writing papers).

Note that for the CEC-BBOB-2015 special session, we provide essentially the same test-suite as in the previous editions of BBOB held at GECCO.
We provide 2 testbeds,

• noise-free and
• noisy,

and we distinguish between

• an expensive optimization scenario (where a focus on the first 100D function evaluations is assumed) and
• a general scenario for which we do not limit the maximal number of function evaluations made.

The participants can freely choose any or all of them. We entirely ban different parameter settings for different test functions and encourage analyses that study the impact of parameter setting changes.

[1] Real-Parameter Black-Box Optimization Benchmarking: Experimental Setup,
http://coco.lri.fr/downloads/download13.09/bbobdocexperiment.pdf.

The Special Session Papers

We encourage any submission that is concerned with black-box optimization benchmarking of continuous optimizers, for example papers that:

• decribe and benchmark new or not-so-new algorithms on the CEC-BBOB-2015 testbed,
• compare new or existing algorithms from the COCO database, or 
• analyze the data obtained in previous editions of BBOB.

Similarly to the BBOB-2013 edition, we also focus on benchmarking optimization algorithms for expensive optimization (with limited budget) which especially invites to benchmark surrogate-assisted algorithms (e.g. based on kriging, support vector machines etc.). Participants are also encouraged to use the existing database for statistical analyses or for designing a portfolio of algorithms.

This session is related to the special session and competition on bound constrained optimization organized by Ponnuthurai Nagaratnam Suganthan et al. (http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/EPNSugan/index_files/CEC2015/CEC2015.htm). Submissions to both sessions are encouraged while we require here that papers presenting benchmarking results follow the benchmarking methodology of the COCO framework. Papers discussing benchmarking methodologies in general are also welcome.

Organisation of the Special Session during the CEC conference

During the special session, algorithms and results will be presented by the participants. An overall analysis and comparison will be accomplished by the organizers and all submitted papers will be critically reviewed as for any other CEC'2015 paper. A planned plenary discussion on future improvements will, among others, address the question, of how the testbed should evolve.

Support Material and Downloads

All the support material needed to benchmark your algorithm(s), process the results, and compile the final papers will be available at the CEC-BBOB-2015 page (http://coco.gforge.inria.fr/doku.php?id=cec-bbob-2015).

The final code and LaTeX templates following the CEC'2015 guidelines will be available in November. To ensure/check that your optimizer and the COCO framework work well together, the currently available downloads (for past BBOB workshops) can be used. The code for the final experiments and post-processing obey the very same interface. Subscribe for special session announcements (see below) to be notified on updates.

Important dates

01/11/2014: code released
19/12/2014: submission deadline20/02/2015: acceptance notification
13/03/2015: final paper version due
25-28/05/2015: workshop at CEC'2015

Contact and Mailing List

Subscribe to our discussion mailing list by following this link: http://lists.lri.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/bbob-discuss.

To receive announcement about the workshop, send an email to the BBOB team at bbob_at_lri.fr with title "register to BBOB announcement list".

Organization Committee

Youhei Akimoto, Shinshu University, Nagano, Japan
Anne Auger, Inria Saclay - Ile-de-France, Orsay, France
Dimo Brockhoff, Inria Lille - Nord Europe, Villeneuve d'Ascq, France
Nikolaus Hansen, Inria Saclay - Ile-de-France, Orsay, France
Olaf Mersmann, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany
Petr Posik, Czech Technical University, Prague, Czech Republic