PPSN - Parallel Problem Solving from Nature

A Brief History

The idea of organizing a workshop called Parallel Problem Solving Solving from Nature (PPSN) emerged in 1989/1990 when

• Bernard Manderick, Brussels,
• Reinhard Männer, Heidelberg,
• Heinz Mühlenbein, St. Augustin,
• and Hans-Paul Schwefel, Dortmund

observed that they were meeting more and more often at the outskirts of conferences on Operations Research, Physics, or Computer Sciences. Their common topic was a not yet established field of science, in Europe at least.

In the U.S.A., a conference series on Genetic Algorithms had been established in 1985 already, but their topic seemed to be too narrow for the PPSN originators. They wanted to include all kinds of computer algorithms which emphasized

• problem solving (optimization, adaptation,...),
• parallel computing (MIMD, SIMD, LAN,...),
• making use of natural metaphors (à la Darwin, Boltzmann,...).

The number of papers submitted and the number of participants in the first PPSN event at Dortmund was so encouraging that this workshop became a starter for a biannual conference series on the Eastern side of the Atlantic Ocean and thus a cisatlantic counterpart to the transatlantic International Conference on Genetic Algorithms (ICGA - since 1999: GECCO).

At San Diego, where the fourth ICGA took place in 1991, the proponents of Genetic Algorithms, Evolutionary Programming (both born in the U.S.A. in the 1960ies, as well), but unconscious of each other and the Germany based Evolution Strategies at first, neglecting each other later on, met and decided to use

• Evolutionary Algorithms and
• Evolutionary Computation

as a common denominator for their approaches toward solving problems by mimicking/simulating evolutionary principles like

• Population,
• Birth and death,
• Mutation,
• Recombination,
• Natural selection,

and others.

Since the beginning, PPSN conferences tried to attract researchers who simulate the thermodynamic process of annealing or use immune and neural networks as well as other paradigms gleaned from natural processes, but Darwinian evolution has been the most frequently used metaphor until now.

So far, nine PPSN conferences have been held

• PPSN I  [1] at Dortmund on October 1 - 3, 1990,
• PPSN II  [2] at Brussels on September 28 - 30, 1992,
• PPSN III  [3] at Jerusalem on October 9 - 14, 1994,
• PPSN IV  [4] at Berlin on September 22 - 26, 1996,
• PPSN V  [5] at Amsterdam on September 27 - 30, 1998,
• PPSN VI  [6] at Paris on September 16 - 20, 2000.
• PPSN VII  [7] at Granada on September 7 - 11, 2002.
• PPSN VIII  [8] at Birmingham on September 18 - 22, 2004.
• PPSN IX  [9] at Reykjavik on September 9 - 13, 2006.

The next PPSN event, PPSN X will take place in Dortmund, September 13 - 17, 2008.

References

1

H.-P. Schwefel and R. Männer, editors. Parallel Problem Solving from Nature - Proceedings 1st Workshop PPSN I, volume 496 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, 1991.

2

R. Männer and B. Manderick, editors. Parallel Problem Solving from Nature 2. North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1992.

3

Y. Davidor, H.-P. Schwefel, and R. Männer, editors. Parallel Problem Solving from Nature - PPSN III, International Conference on Evolutionary Computation, volume 866 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, 1994.

4

H.-M. Voigt, W. Ebeling, I. Rechenberg, and H.-P. Schwefel, editors. Parallel Problem Solving from Nature - PPSN IV, International Conference on Evolutionary Computation, volume 1141 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, 1996.

5

A.E. Eiben, Th. Bäck, M. Schoenauer, and H.-P. Schwefel, editors. Parallel Problem Solving from Nature - PPSN V, volume 1498 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, 1998.

6

M. Schoenauer, K. Deb, G. Rudolph, X. Yao, E. Lutton, J.J. Merelo, and H.-P. Schwefel, editors. Parallel Problem Solving from Nature - PPSN VI, volume 1917 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, 2000.

7

J.J. Merelo Guervós, P. Adamidis, H.-G. Beyer, J.-L. Fernández-Villacañas, H.-P. Schwefel, editors. Parallel Problem Solving from Nature - PPSN VII, volume 2439 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, 2002.

8

X. Yao, E. Burke, J.A. Lozano, J. Smith, J.J. Merelo Guervós, J.A. Bullinaria, J. Rowe, P. Tino, A. Kaban and H.-P. Schwefel, editors. Parallel Problem Solving from Nature - PPSN VIII, volume 3242 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, 2004.

9

T. P. Runarsson, H.-G. Beyer, E. Burke, J.J. Merelo-Guervós, L. D. Whitley, X. Yao, editors. Parallel Problem Solving from Nature - PPSN IX, volume 4193 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, 2006.