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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-GB link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72" style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>***********************************************************<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>CALL FOR PAPERS<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>***********************************************************<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>GECCO 2023 Workshop on<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>Strict Box-Constraint Optimization Studies (SBOX-COST)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2023)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>July 15-19, 2023, Lisbon, Portugal. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>Webpage: <a href="https://sbox-cost.github.io">https://sbox-cost.github.io</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>***********************************************************<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>## About the workshop<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>Benchmarking plays a critical role in the design and development of optimization algorithms. The way in which benchmark suites are set up thus influences the set of algorithms recommended to practitioners and biases the goals of algorithm designers. The focus of this workshop is on benchmarking algorithms on problems with box constraints (i.e. upper and lower limits on the input variables defining the domain of the search space). In practical applications, evaluating points outside of the domain is often impossible, or not sensible, and as such, should be avoided. However, in benchmarking as practiced today, problems are well-defined even outside of the stated parameter ranges, which translates to the algorithms being able to safely ignore these ranges and operate on infeasible solutions.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>Setting up box constraints represents the simplest type of constraints and gives rise to the so-called box-constrained problems. In this workshop, we will discuss in more detail how the presence of box-constraints impacts the performance of optimization algorithms and provide participants with a new variant of the BBOB suite called SBOX-COST for continuous, single-objective, noiseless optimization. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>Two types of submissions will be accepted for this workshop: <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>1. Short papers (up to 4 pages) reporting results of new or existing algorithms on the provided BBOB SBOX-COST suite of (box-constrained) test functions. Please refer to the following link for the data and instructions on how to use it: <a href="https://github.com/sbox-cost/Examples">https://github.com/sbox-cost/Examples</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>2. Longer papers (up to 8 pages) discussing aspects related to the presence of box-constraints. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>Topics of interest (but not limited to) include:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>• New insights of existing algorithms when applied to box-constrained problems<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>• Performance analysis and visualization of algorithms on the provided BBOB SBOX-COST suite of test functions<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>• Algorithm design for box-constrained problems <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'> • Metrics for benchmarking algorithm performance on and complexity of box-constrained problems<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>• Other aspects of box-constrained benchmarking optimization algorithms<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>## Submission<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>For paper submission instructions and templates, please see the submission instructions <a href="https://gecco-2023.sigevo.org/Paper-Submission-Instructions">https://gecco-2023.sigevo.org/Paper-Submission-Instructions</a> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>## Important (STRICT) deadline dates (preliminary)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>Submission opening: February 13, 2023<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>Submission deadline: April 14, 2023<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>Notification to authors: May 3, 2023<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>Camera-ready papers: May 10, 2023<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>Author’s mandatory registration: May 10, 2023<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>## Workshop organizers<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>Anna V. Kononova (Leiden University, NL), Olaf Mersmann (TH Koeln, GER), Diederick Vermetten (Leiden University, NL), Manuel Lopez-Ibanez (The University of Manchester, UK), Richard Allmendinger (The University of Manchester, UK), Youngmin Kim (The University of Manchester, UK)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>More information about the organizers can be found on the workshop webpage <a href="https://sbox-cost.github.io">https://sbox-cost.github.io</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>## Contact<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";color:black;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>Please feel free contact <a href="mailto:a.kononova@liacs.leidenuniv.nl">a.kononova@liacs.leidenuniv.nl</a> in case of questions.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>