The 1999 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) would
like to invite you, as a recent author of a paper related to genetic
and evolutionary computation (GEC), to become a member of the program
committee of the GECCO conference to be held on July 13-17, 1999 in
Orlando, Florida.
As you may know, the 1999 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation
Conference (GECCO) will be a combined meeting of the Eighth
International Conference on Genetic Algorithms (ICGA) and the Fourth
Annual Genetic Programming Conference (GP) in cooperation with the
American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Parallel
Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN) steering committee, the
International Conference on Evolvable Systems (ICES) steering
committee, and other organizations and conferences to be announced.
GECCO will be held in lieu of ICGA-99 and GP-99, and as such, it
combines the oldest continuously running GEC conference, and the two
largest GEC conferences. We believe that the GECCO conference in 1999
will be a unique opportunity to bring together an exceptionally large
number of people from all facets of genetic and evolutionary
computation.
Being on the program committee will involve reading, reviewing, and
ranking about half a dozen submitted papers on genetic and
evolutionary computation or related areas during the month of February
1999. (The paper submission deadline for GECCO-99 is Wednesday,
January 27, 1999).
The willingness of active contributors to help the conference in this
way is absolutely critical to the success of GECCO. In the past, some
have complained that their point of view has been excluded from the
review process. By agreeing to join us, active GEC researchers will
help make the GECCO review process fair, open, and broadly
participatory. As part of the charter establishing this conference,
extraordinary steps have been taken to ensure that (1) review
representation is exceptionally broad and (2) the traditions, norms,
and standards of the different flavors of GEC are respected. Let us
take a brief moment to explain how this will be done.
First, the charter of the conference says that reviewers are
automatically invited based on their recent contribution of a
peer-reviewed publication:
A person may be a reviewer for the conference if he or she is
an author of at least one peer-reviewed paper in a journal,
conference proceedings book, or collected book of papers
published since January 1, 1995 involving any aspect or
combinations of aspects of [genetic and] evolutionary
computation.
Thus, becoming a reviewer is even-handedly based on recency of
peer-reviewed contribution.
Second, GECCO explicitly recognizes and respects the different
traditions of different sub-fields within GEC and related disciplines.
As such, the conference has established six different tracks each with
its own chair/editor:
1. Evolution Strategies/Evolutionary Programming (ES/EP).
A. E. Eiben, gusz@wi.leidenuniv.nl
2. Genetic Algorithms/Classifier Systems (GA/CS).
Robert E. Smith, rsmith@btc.uwe.ac.uk
3. Genetic Programming/Evolvable Hardware (GP/EH).
Wolfgang Banzhaf (also Proceedings Editor-in-Chief),
banzhaf@LS11.informatik.uni-dortmund.de
4. Artificial Life, Adaptive Behavior, and Agents (AAA).
Vasant Honavar, honavar@cs.iastate.edu
5. DNA and Molecular Computing (DNA/MC).
Max H. Garzon, mgarzon@memphis.edu
6. Real-World Applications (RWA).
Mark Jakiela, mjj@mecf.wustl.edu
These separate "demes" will establish separate rules and standards for
paper acceptance based on the practices within the sub-discipline.
In this way, we hope to more closely group "birds of a feather" and
thereby avoid the rejection of high quality papers by reviewers who
are less than familiar with the standards that should apply to a
particular kind of paper.
With this kind of carefully constructed process, we believe that a
large number of recent GEC authors will choose to join the program
committee. If you are willing to be a member (reviewer) of the
program committee, please email gecco@aaai.org and send the following
information:
(1) the exact way you want your name listed,
(2) the institutional affiliation you want listed with your name,
(3) your physical mailing address,
(4) your phone number (for courier address labels),
(5) your preferred e-mail address,
(6) which of the six committees you would like to join
(GP/EH, GA/CS, or ES/EP, AAA, DNA/MC, or RWA),
and if you have a preference for one of the sub-categories
within that committee (GP and/or EH, GA and/or CS, ES and/or EP,
ALife and/or Adaptive Behavior and/or Agents, DNA and/or MC).
(7) the title, date, and publication name of a peer-reviewed GEC or
related paper (published after January 1, 1995) that qualifies
you as a member of the GECCO committee (a complete citation
is unnecessary).
Authors who choose to join the GECCO program committee will be
acknowledged in the conference proceedings as well as in various
editions of the calls for papers, the conference brochure, and
advertising.
Physical copies of the papers will be sent to reviewers by UPS courier
service in late January 1999, and the review form will be sent by
e-mail. Reviewers will be given several weeks to read and review the
papers. Reviews are returned by e-mail directly to the AAAI. The
reviewer's name is removed from the message by the AAAI before the
review is forwarded to the chair of the appropriate track and
(eventually) the submitting author. If a reviewer's physical mailing
address or e-mail address changes between now and February 1999, the
conference office (gecco@aaai.org) should be notified as soon as
possible.
Although the conference is over a year away, we already have an
outstanding lineup of chairs, editors, senior members, and tutorial
speakers (see http://www-illigal.ge.uiuc.edu/gecco/). The
editors/chairs have already been mentioned, but among those joining us
as senior committee members are Thomas Baeck, Hans-Georg Beyer,
Michael Conrad, Ingo Rechenberg, Guenter Rudolph, Bir Bhanu, Bill
P. Buckles, Runwei Cheng, Marco Colombetti, Herbert Dawid, Marco
Dorigo, Emanuel Falkenauer, Mitsuo Gen, Randy L. Haupt, Sue Ellen
Haupt, John H. Holland, Kim F. Man, Dirk C. Mattfeld, Zbigniew
Michalewicz, Melanie Mitchell, K. S. Tang, Michael D. Vose, David
Andre, Vladan Babovic, Forrest H Bennett III, Tobias Blickle, Dimitris
C. Dracopoulos, Frank D. Francone, Andreas Geyer-Schulz, Wolfgang
A. Halang, Hitoshi Iba, Christian Jacob, Martin Keane, Robert E.
Keller, John R. Koza, Sam Kwong, W. B. Langdon, Peter Nordin, and Moshe
Sipper. Among those joining us for an extensive offering of tutorials
are Rik Belew, Forrest H Bennett III, Lawrence Davis, Kalyanmoy Deb,
Ken DeJong, Stephanie Forrest, Max Garzon, Tetsuya Higuchi, John
R. Koza, W. B. Langdon, Jean-Arcady Meyer, Melanie Mitchell, Randy
C. Murphy, Peter Nordin, I. C. Parmee, Guenter Rudolph, Hans-Paul
Schwefel, Leigh Tesfatsion, Michael Vose, Darrell Whitley, and Stewart
Wilson. Other workshop and tutorial proposals as well as ideas for
invited speakers and other activities may be sent to the business
committee (deg@uiuc.edu or koza@cs.stanford.edu).
As active researchers ourselves, we understand that it is difficult to
take time away from research for the "administrivia" of the reviewing
process. But researchers are often the first to complain when their
conferences are guided by "political" not "scientific" considerations.
Therefore we ask that all qualified committee candidates take this
invitation very seriously, and we urge you to step up to the plate to
make sure that the technical content of this conference is guided by
our field's active contributors (qualified reviewers should send an
email with the requested information above to gecco@aaai.org) NAMES OF
REVIEWERS WHO RESPOND BEFORE JULY 15, 1998 WILL BE PUBLISHED IN THE
FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS.
Moreover, we issue a special invitation to past authors to consider
submitting to GECCO 99. Although GECCO is a new entity it is the
combine of the oldest and the two largest, high-quality conferences in
the field of genetic and evolutionary computation. With six separate
demes for different styles of work and a participatory review process,
we expect an unusually author-friendly conference. Additionally, past
attendance at ICGA and GP suggests that we should have over 600
researchers in attendance, but we will take steps to make sure that
there is plenty of time for face-to-face meeting and interaction as
well.
In short, we believe that GECCO-99 will be a special event for the
community of genetic and evolutionary computation. We hope you can
take the time to join us in the review process and we welcome
your paper submission, but in any event we look forward to seeing you in
Orlando, July 13-17, 1999 at GECCO-99.
Thank you,
David E. Goldberg (Illinois)
GECCO-99 Conference Chair and Business Committee
and
John R. Koza (Stanford)
GECCO-99 Business Committee