<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><p> (apologies for cross postings)</p><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr"><span id="m_4711423091009736850m_5957305018724444668m_3374746826804250111m_7875798884730910232m_6135786680117696243m_6596333851043045952gmail-docs-internal-guid-a7051d9d-7fff-4268-fc26-d62f2bd4735e"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; text-align: center; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; text-align: center; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: 700; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">QuantOpt@GECCO-2025</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; text-align: center; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: 700; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">4</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: 700; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 0.6em; vertical-align: super;">th</span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: 700; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> Workshop on Quantum Optimization</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; text-align: center; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: 700; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO'25)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; text-align: center; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: 700; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Malaga, Spain, July 14-18, 2025</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; text-align: center; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><font color="#ff0000"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-weight: 700; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Extended Paper Submission Deadline: </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-weight: 700; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">April 2, 2025</span></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: 700; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Scope</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Quantum computers are rapidly becoming more powerful and increasingly applicable to solve problems in the real world. They have the potential to solve extremely hard computational problems, which are currently intractable by conventional computers. Quantum optimization is an emerging field that focuses on using quantum computing technologies to solve hard optimization problems. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">There are two main types of quantum computers: quantum annealers and gate-based quantum computers. Quantum annealers are specially tailored to solve combinatorial optimization problems. They find (near) optimal solutions via quantum annealing, which is similar to traditional simulated annealing, and use quantum tunnelling phenomena to provide a faster mechanism for moving between states and faster processing. On the other hand, gate-based quantum computers are universal and can perform general purpose calculations. These computers can be used to solve combinatorial optimization problems using the quantum approximate optimization algorithm and quantum search algorithms. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Quantum computing has also given rise to quantum-inspired computers and algorithms. Quantum-inspired computers use dedicated hardware technology to emulate/simulate quantum computers. Quantum-inspired optimization algorithms use classical computers to simulate some physical phenomena such as superposition and entanglement to perform quantum computations, in an attempt to retain some of its benefit in conventional hardware when searching for solutions. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">To solve optimization problems on a quantum computer, we need to reformulate them in a format suitable for the quantum hardware, in terms of qubits, biases and couplings between qubits. In mathematical terms, this requirement translates to reformulating the optimization problem as a Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) problem. This is closely related to the renowned Ising model. It constitutes a universal class, since all combinatorial optimization problems can be formulated as QUBOs. In practice, some classes of optimization problems can be naturally mapped to a QUBO, whereas others are much more challenging to map. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: 700; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Content</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">The aim of the workshop is to provide a forum for both scientific presentations and discussion of issues related to quantum optimization. As the algorithms that quantum computers use for optimization can be regarded as general types of randomized search heuristics, there are potentially great research benefits and synergy to bringing together the communities of quantum computing and randomized search heuristics. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">The workshop aims to be as inclusive as possible and welcomes contributions from all areas broadly related to quantum optimization – by researchers from both academia and industry. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Particular topics of interest include, but are not limited to: </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">· Formulation of optimization problems as QUBOs (including handling of non-binary representations and constraints) </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">· Fitness landscape analysis of QUBOs </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">· Novel search algorithms to solve QUBOs </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">· Experimental comparisons on QUBO benchmarks </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">· Theoretical analysis of search algorithms for QUBOs </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">· Speed-up experiments on traditional hardware vs quantum(-inspired) hardware </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">· Decomposition of optimization problems for quantum hardware </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">· Application of the quantum approximate optimization algorithm </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">· Application of Grover's algorithm to solve optimization problems </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">· Novel quantum-inspired optimization algorithms </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">· Optimization/discovery of quantum circuits </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">· Quantum optimization for machine learning problems </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">· Optical Annealing </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">· Dealing with noise in quantum computing </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">· Quantum Gates’ optimization, Quantum Coherent Control </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">All accepted papers of this workshop will be included in the Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO'25) Companion Volume. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: 700; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Instructions for Authors</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">We invite submissions of two types of paper: </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">· Regular papers (limit 8 pages) </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">· Short papers (limit 4 pages) </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Papers should present original work that meets the high-quality standards of GECCO. Each paper will be rigorously evaluated in a review process. Accepted papers appear in the ACM digital library as part of the Companion Proceedings of GECCO. Each paper accepted needs to have at least one author registered by the author registration deadline. Papers must be submitted via the online submission system </span><a href="https://ssl.linklings.net/conferences/gecco/" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(5, 99, 193); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">https://ssl.linklings.net/conferences/gecco/</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">. Please refer to </span><a href="https://gecco-2025.sigevo.org/Paper-Submission-Instructions" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(5, 99, 193); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">https://gecco-2025.sigevo.org/Paper-Submission-Instructions</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> for more detailed instructions. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: 700; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Workshop Chairs</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">- Alberto Moraglio, University of Exeter, UK</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">- Mayowa Ayodele, D-Wave systems, UK</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">- Francisco Chicano, University of Malaga, Spain</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">- Ofer Shir, Tel-Hai College and Migal Institute, Israel</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">- Lee Spector, Amherst College, USA</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">- Matthieu Parizy Fujitsu Limited, Japan</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><br></span></p></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>