FOGA 2007 - program

One of the main reasons the FOGA series of conferences has had a large impact in the field of Evolutionary Computation has been its distinct profile as the only conference dedicated to theoretical issues of a "foundational" nature - both conceptual and technical. In this FOGA conference and in keeping with this tradition special attention will be paid to the biological foundations of Evolutionary Computation. The essential mathematical structure behind many Evolutionary Algorithms is that familiar from population genetics whose basic elements have been around now for at least 70 years. The last 20 years or so however, have witnessed huge changes in our understanding of how genomes and other genetic structures work due to a plethora of new experimental techniques and results. How does this new phenomenology change our understanding of what genetic systems do and how they do it? and how can we design "better" ones.

The first 2 days of FOGA (8-9 January, 2007) will be a workshop which will consist of organized discusions built around sets of lectures given by two world authorities on the "old" biology and the "new" biology - Reinhard Burger and Jim Shapiro. The idea is that by a careful presentation of the main ideas, a useful transfer of knowledge of the latest developments and understanding of genetic dynamics in biology will be fruitful for the Evolutionary Computation community in better understanding and designing artificial genetic systems. In particular we will address the questions:

How do real genetic systems work?
Why do they work that way?
From this what can we learn in order to design "better" artificial genetic systems?

It is also hoped that there may be a corresponding cross-fertilization from Evolutionary Computation into both the "old" and "new" genetic dynamics using computation as a paradigm, as well as in terms of specific theoretical results.

A more detailed program of the first two days will follow shortly.

The last two days (10-11th of FOGA IX will be dedicated to the presentation of results from selected submissions to the conference and will cover all areas of Evolutionary Computation. Darrell Whitley (http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~whitley/) will start with an overview of the "state-of-the-art" in Evolutionary Computation.

A more detailed program of the first two days will follow shortly.