Eighth International Conference on Swarm Intelligence - ANTS 2012

ANTS 2012
Eighth International Conference on Swarm Intelligence

September 12-14, 2012. Brussels, Belgium

Call for papers prepared on November 17, 2011
More details and up-to-date information at
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/ants2012

Scope of the Conference
=======================

Swarm intelligence is a relatively new discipline that deals with the
study of self-organizing processes both in nature and in artificial
systems. Researchers in ethology and animal behavior have proposed
many models to explain interesting aspects of social insect behavior
such as self-organization and shape-formation. Recently, algorithms
and methods inspired by these models have been proposed to solve
difficult problems in many domains.

An example of a particularly successful research direction in swarm
intelligence is ant colony optimization, the main focus of which is on
discrete optimization problems. Ant colony optimization has been
applied successfully to a large number of difficult discrete
optimization problems including the traveling salesman problem, the
quadratic assignment problem, scheduling, vehicle routing, etc., as
well as to routing in telecommunication networks. Another interesting
approach is that of particle swarm optimization, that focuses on
continuous optimization problems. Here too, a number of successful
applications can be found in the recent literature. Swarm robotics is
another relevant field. Here, the focus is on applying swarm
intelligence techniques to the control of large groups of cooperating
autonomous robots.

ANTS 2012 will give researchers in swarm intelligence the opportunity
to meet, to present their latest research, and to discuss current
developments and applications.

The three-day conference will be held in Brussels, Belgium, on
September 12-14, 2012.

Relevant Research Areas
=======================

ANTS 2012 solicits contributions dealing with any aspect of swarm
intelligence. Typical, but not exclusive, topics of interest are:

Behavioral models of social insects or other animal societies that
can stimulate new algorithmic approaches.

Empirical and theoretical research in swarm intelligence.

Application of swarm intelligence methods, such as ant colony
optimization or particle swarm optimization, to real-world problems.

Theoretical and experimental research in swarm robotics systems.

Publication Details
===================

Conference proceedings will be published by Springer in the LNCS
series.

The journal Swarm Intelligence will publish a special issue dedicated
to ANTS 2012 that will contain extended versions of the best research
works presented at the conference. Further details will be
published on the web site.

Best Paper Award
================

A best paper award will be presented at the conference.

Invited talks
================

- Prof. Dirk Helbing (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) on "Towards Simulating the Foundations of Society"

- Prof. Nigel R. Franks (University of Bristol, UK) on "Ants, Bees and Brains"

- Prof. Vijay Kumar (University of Pennsylvania, USA) on "Architectures, abstractions, and algorithms for large teams of robots"

Further Information
===================

Up-to-date information will be published on the web site
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/ants2012/. For information about local
arrangements, registration forms, etc., please refer to the
above-mentioned web site or contact the local organizers at the
address below.

Conference Address
==================

ANTS 2012
IRIDIA CP 194/6 Tel +32-2-6502729
Université Libre de Bruxelles Fax +32-2-6502715
Av. F. D. Roosevelt 50 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/ants2012
1050 Bruxelles, Belgium email: ants@iridia.ulb.ac.be

Important Dates
===============

Submission deadline March 2, 2012
Notification of acceptance May 3, 2012
Camera ready copy May 17, 2012
Conference September 12-14, 2012

ANTS 2012 Organizing Committee
==============================

General Chair:
Marco Dorigo, IRIDIA, ULB, Brussels, Belgium

Technical Program Chairs:
Christian Blum, ALBCOM, LSI, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
Andries Engelbrecht, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Roderich Groß, Sheffield University, UK

Publication Chair:
Anders Lyhne Christensen, Instituto Universitario de Lisboa, Portugal

Organization Chairs:
Mauro Birattari, IRIDIA, ULB, Brussels, Belgium
Thomas Stützle, IRIDIA, ULB, Brussels, Belgium

Local Arrangements:
Andreagiovanni Reina, IRIDIA, ULB, Brussels, Belgium
Arne Brutschy, IRIDIA, ULB, Brussels, Belgium

Nature Inspired Distributed Computing

**********************************************************************
                       The 14th International Workshop on 
                    Nature Inspired Distributed Computing 
                                  (NIDISC'11)
    http://nidisc2011.gforge.uni.lu/


                           held in conjunction with
                     The 25th IEEE International 
   Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium  (IPDPS'2010)
                            16-20 May 2011
                        
                         Anchorage (Alaska) USA
                          http://www.ipdps.org
**********************************************************************

Workshop Theme :
=============

Techniques based on metaheuristics and nature-inspired paradigms can
provide efficient solutions to a wide variety of problems. Moreover,
parallel and distributed metaheuristics can be used to provide more
powerful problem solving environments in a variety of fields, ranging,
for example, from finance to bio- and health-informatics. This
workshop seeks to provide an opportunity for researchers to explore
the connection between metaheuristics and the development of solutions
to problems that arise in operations research, parallel computing,
telecommunications, bioinformatics, and many others. 

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
* Nature-inspired methods (e.g. ant colonies, GAs, cellular automata,
DNA and molecular computing, local search, etc) for problem solving
environments.
* Parallel and distributed metaheuristics techniques (algorithms,
technologies and tools).
* Applications combining traditional parallel and distributed
computing and optimization techniques as well as theoretical issues
(convergence, complexity, etc).
* Other algorithms and applications relating the above mentioned
research areas.

Prospective authors of high quality research contributions are invited
to submit an electronic copy of their manuscript not exceeding 8
two-column pages including figures and references in the traditional
IEEE format used in IPDPS. Please, use Postscript or PDF when
possible. In your email, please indicate paper title, author(s), and
the corresponding author.

A selected group of papers from the workshop will be invited to
submit extended versions of their papers to a special issue of an
international scholarly journal. Further announcements will be made
during the workshop.

General Chair :
============
- Albert Y. Zomaya, The University of Sydney -Australia- (zomaya@it.usyd.edu.au)


Program Co-chairs :
==============

- Pascal Bouvry, University of Luxembourg -Luxembourg- ( pascal.bouvry@uni.lu )
- Franciszek Seredynski, Polish Academy of Sciences -Poland- ( sered@ipipan.waw.pl )
- El-Ghazali Talbi, University of Lille, INRIA -France- ( talbi@lifl.fr )


Program Committee (to be completed) :
=====================================

E. Alba, University of Màlaga, Spain
M. Affenzeller, Univ. of Hagenberg, Austria
A. Al-Dubai, Edinburgh Napier University, United Kingdom
A. Al-Jumaily, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
L. Bononi, University of Bologna, Italy 
A. Boukerche, University of Ottawa, Canada
P. Bouvry, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
J. Branke, University of Karlsruhe, Germany
E. Cantù-Paz, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA
C. Coello, CINVESTAV-IPN, Mexico
T. Crainic, Univ. of Montreal, Canada
B. Di Martino, Univ. of Naples, Italia
T. El-Ghazawi, George Washington University, USA
P. Herrero, UPM, Spain
A. Lewis, Griffith University, Australia
M. Middendorf, University of Leipzig, Germany
N. Melab, University of Lille, France
M. D. Moore, Texas A & M - Corpus Christi, USA
S. Mostaghim, Univ. of Karlsruhe, Germany
A. J.Nebro, Univ. of Malaga, Spain
C. Ribeiro, Univ. of Fluminense, Brazil
H. Sarbazi-azad, Sharif University of Technology, Iran
G. Ch. Sirakoulis, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece
G. Spezzano, University of Calabria, Italy
Z. Tari, RMIT University, Australia
M. Tomassini, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
F. Xhafa, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain

Publicity Chair:
==============================
- Grégoire Danoy, University of Luxembourg -Luxembourg- (gregoire.danoy@uni.lu)


Papers should be submitted to:
==============================

- P. Bouvry, University of Luxembourg -Luxembourg- ( pascal.bouvry@uni.lu )
- F. Seredynski, Polish Academy of Sciences  -Poland- ( sered@ipipan.waw.pl )
- E-G. Talbi, University of Lille, INRIA -France- ( talbi@lifl.fr )

 
Important Dates:
================
- Submission Deadline   - December 4, 2010
- Notification of Acceptance  - January  8, 2011
- Final Copy Due     - February 1, 2010




=========================
Gregoire Danoy, PhD
Scientific Collaborator
University of Luxembourg
FSTC - CSC - ILIAS
=========================