Speaker: Academician Thomas Bäck
Title: Automated Generation of Optimization Heuristics: From Algorithm Configuration to Large Language Models
Time: December 11, 2024 (Wednesday)15:30
Website: Teams Link
Abstract:
A large number of nature-inspired optimization algorithms (such as evolutionary algorithms (EA), particle swarm optimization (PSO), differential evolution (DE), and ant colony optimization (ACO)) and their variants make it challenging to choose the best algorithm. In this presentation, we will firstly introduce and discuss the idea of automatically optimizing optimization heuristics. We will illustrate how to search the combination design space consisting of thousands of evolution strategy configuration variants using a modular covariance matrix adaptive evolution strategy framework and how to analyze the results using data mining. We will also provide an overview of the expansion of the design space to other algorithms such as particle swarm optimization and differential evolution.Secondly, we will discuss the application of this method to real-world engineering problems, showcasing performance improvements using a car crash simulation as an example. Finally, we will introduce LLaMEA (Large Language Model Evolutionary Algorithm), a new method for automatically generating high-performance meta-heuristic algorithms using large language models.
Personal Introduction:
Thomas Bäck (Fellow, IEEE) received the Diploma degree in Computer Science in 1990 and the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science in 1994 (under supervision of H.-P. Schwefel), both from the University of Dortmund, Germany. He is Professor of Computer Science with the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), Leiden University, Netherlands. His research interests include evolutionary computation, machine learning, and their real-world applications, especially in sustainable smart industry and health. Dr. Bäck has been elected as member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW, 2021), as IEEE Fellow (class of 2022), and as a member of Academia Europaea (2022). Dr. Bäck has been elected as member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW, 2021), as IEEE Fellow (class of 2022), and as a member of Academia Europaea (2022). He was a recipient of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Evolutionary Computation Pioneer Award in 2015, was elected as Fellow of the International Society of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation in 2003, and received the best Ph.D. thesis award from the German society of Computer Science (GI) in 1995.He currently serves as an Editor in Chief of the Evolutionary Computation Journal (MIT Press), Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation and Artificial Intelligence Review journals and area editor of the ACM Transactions on Evolutionary Learning and Optimization. He was also co-editor-in-chief of the Handbook of Evolutionary Computation (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis 1997), co-editor of the Handbook of Natural Computing (Springer, 2013), author of Evolutionary Computation in Theory and Practice (OUP, New York, 1996) and co-author of Contemporary Evolution Strategies (Springer, 2013).
[Editor:Wanqi Liu]