IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation
The IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation is a research conference for practitioners in the field of evolutionary computation, interpreted broadly, organised by the Computational Intelligence Society">Computational intelligence">Computational Intelligence Society. It has been held annually since 1994, although its current name was only adopted in 1999. In alternate years it combines with the other main conferences organised by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society in the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence.
Origin and naming
IEEE CEC began in 1994 as the IEEE Conference on Evolutionary Computation. In 1995 the conference name changed to the IEEE International Conference on Evolutionary Computation and it was held with this title through 1998. In 1999, the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, in combination with the Evolutionary Programming Society which operated the annual Evolutionary Programming Conference and the IET which operated the International Conference on Genetic Algorithms in Engineering Systems, Innovations and Applications through the IEE, combined to co-sponsor the newly named IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, and this title continues to the present.In even-numbered years it is part of the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence, which combines all the main conferences of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society: IEEE CEC, IJCNN and FUZZ-IEEE.
History
Since the first conference in 1994 the conference has been held annually at different international locations reflecting global involvement in the field of evolutionary computation.| Year | Location | Website | Proceedings |
| 1994 | Orlando, United States | No | Yes |
| 1995 | Perth, Australia | No | Yes |
| 1996 | Nagoya, Japan | No | Yes |
| 1997 | Indianapolis, United States | No | Yes |
| 1998 | Anchorage, United States | No | Yes |
| 1999 | Washington, D.C., United States | Yes | Yes |
| 2000 | San Diego, United States | No | Yes |
| 2001 | Seoul, South Korea | No | Yes |
| 2002 | Honolulu, United States | No | Yes |
| 2003 | Canberra, Australia | No | Yes |
| 2004 | Portland, United States | No | Yes |
| 2005 | Edinburgh, United Kingdom | Yes | Yes |
| 2006 | Vancouver, Canada | Yes | Yes |
| 2007 | Singapore | Yes | Yes |
| 2008 | Hong Kong, China | Yes | Yes |
| 2009 | Trondheim, Norway | No | Yes |
| 2010 | Barcelona, Spain | No | Yes |
| 2011 | New Orleans, United States | Yes | Yes |
| 2012 | Brisbane, Australia | No | Yes |
| 2013 | Cancún, Mexico | No | Yes |
| 2014 | Beijing, China | Yes | Yes |
| 2015 | Sendai, Japan | No | Yes |
| 2016 | Vancouver, Canada | Yes | Yes |
| 2017 | San Sebastián, Spain | No | Yes |
| 2018 | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil | No | Yes |
| 2019 | Wellington, New Zealand | No | Yes |
| 2020 | Glasgow, United Kingdom | No | Yes |
| 2021 | Kraków, Poland | No | Yes |
| 2022 | Padua, Italy | No | Yes |
| 2023 | Chicago, United States | Yes | Yes |
| 2024 | Yokohama, Japan | Yes | Yes |
| 2025 | Hangzhou, China | No | Yes |
| 2026 | Maastricht, Netherlands | Yes | Forthcoming |
Main conference
Themes
The main part of each IEEE CEC conference is a series of sessions covering most fields of evolutionary computation, its applications and related areas with similar inspiration from biology. Because there are a large number of sessions much of the conference is organised in parallel: the one page diagram of the program of IEEE CEC 2023 makes this clear.To emphasize this, the table below lists sessions from the program of IEEE CEC 2011 together with comments. Although 2011 is now some time ago that year was selected because the detailed program was available as a separate document that can be downloaded and read separately from the conference proceedings.
| Topic | Comments |
| The artificial bee colony algorithm | Applications inspired by the behaviour of bees |
| Real world applications | Multiple sessions about applications of evolutionary algorithms and related techniques not covered by other sessions |
| Evolutionary robotics | The application of evolutionary algorithms to control of robots |
| Evolutionary strategies | The evolution strategy is one of the original paradigms of evolutionary computation |
| Evolutionary computation applied to finance | Fintech is an important field to which evolutionary computation can contribute |
| Hardware aspects of biologically inspired systems | Evolutionary computation usually focuses on software. What about the hardware needed to run it? |
| Computer vision | Evolutionary computation applied to image analysis |
| Applications in bioinformatics and computational biology | Much of computational biology is concerned with the software tools needed for bioinformatics, so these application domains overlap |
| Evolutionary computation applied to large-scale problems using multi-core architectures. | In 2025 laptops have multi-core CPUs: in 2011 this referred to GPUs |
| Clustering and data mining | Machine learning techniques applied to data science can also use evolutionary computation |
| Evolvable hardware and software | Using, for example, field programmable gate arrays |
| Fitness landscapes and learning | evolutionary algorithms depend on an idea of fitness and this affects their application |
| Computational intelligence and games | Applications both in game theory and in specific games |
| Nature-inspired constrained optimization | Applications of evolutionary computation to this type of optimization |
| Approaches to Large-scale optimization problems | How can evolutionary computation be useful? |
| The ant colony algorithm applied to complex problems | This algorithm is inspired by the behaviour of ants in nature |
| Art and music | How can evolutionary computation be applied in these creative disciplines? |
| Genetic programming | One of the classic algorithms of evolutionary computation |
| Memetic algorithms | Another direction of research in evolutionary algorithms |
| Cultural algorithms and artificial immune systems | Applications inspired by complex systems in cultural interactions and in the biological immune system |
| Evolution of developmental systems | Algorithms inspired by developmental biology |
| Metaheuristics for global continuous optimization | Applications of evolutionary algorithms as heuristics to this branch of optimization |
| Representation and operators | How to represent a real-world problem in an evolutionary algorithm in order to get useful solutions |
| Learning classifier systems | Combining an evolutionary algorithm with some other machine learning component |
| Multi-objective optimization | Evolutionary computation applied to another area of optimization |
| Learning in autonomous agents | Application of evolutionary computation in this field of artificial intelligence |
| Statistical techniques in evolutionary algorithms | The use of statistical inference can affect applications of evolutionary algorithms |
| Particle swarm optimization | More biologically inspired algorithms often associated with evolutionary computation |
| Medical image analysis | Applying evolutionary computation to this specific domain |
| Evolutionary programming | Another of the early algorithms that formed evolutionary computation |
| Differential evolution | Another type of evolutionary algorithm |
| Evolved neural networks | Neural networks are a major distinct field of activity in computer science, but evolutionary computation can introduce change |
| Theory of evolutionary computation | What are the mathematical bases of evolutionary algorithms? |
| Engineering applications of evolutionary computation | A session focusing on another application domain |
| Complex networks | Complex networks may be addressed through applications of evolutionary computation |
| Multi-agent systems | Applications of evolutionary computation to the understanding of multi-agent systems |
| Network optimization | Real-world network design generates optimization problems that may be addressed through application of evolutionary computation |
| Coevolution in evolutionary computation | Drawing inspiration from biological coevolution can lead to innovation in evolutionary computation |
| Artificial life | Drawing inspiration from wider areas of biology, in addition to evolutionary biology |
Plenary speakers
Researchers recognized in the field are invited to give plenary speeches at each IEEE CEC conference. At IEEE CEC 2023 in Chicago the [|plenary speakers] were Stephanie Forrest, Markus Olhofer and Kalyanmoy Deb. Stephanie Forrest was the recipient of the Pioneer Award at that conference.Awards
The Pioneer Award mentioned in plenary speakers above is awarded at IEEE CEC conferences to an individual who is recognized in having made a substantial contribution to the field of evolutionary computation.In addition, awards are presented to the winners of the competitions, and to presenters of papers selected as the Best Papers.
Additional sessions
Tutorials
Because the main sessions of each IEEE CEC conference covers so many different fields, tutorials are held in addition to the main conference that allow participants to learn about areas that they may not have been familiar with before. Examples of tutorials at IEEE CEC 2023 are given in the table below.| Tutorial title | Comments |
| Genetic programming and machine learning for scheduling | Scheduling is an important application domain in many areas |
| Transfer learning in evolutionary spaces | Transfer learning, a machine learning technique that originated separately from evolutionary computation can follow new directions in the latter field |
| Benchmarking and analyzing iterative optimization heuristics with IOH profiler | Benchmarking is as important in evolutionary computation as it is in other areas of computer science, since many similar algorithms can be developed |
| Evolutionary computation success in medical diagnosis | A tutorial on a specific application domain. |
Workshops
Although the main IEEE CEC conference does cover a very wide range of different fields, continual change in the area of evolutionary computation justifies the inclusion of some time for workshops. A workshop is a mini-conference focusing on a particular area of research and/or application, that may not be covered fully in the main conference. Following a call for workshops and acceptance, workshop organizers usually issue a separate call for participation distinct from the main call for papers of the conference. The IEEE CEC 2023 conference included three workshops.| Workshop title |
| Evolutionary Computation for Explainable Artificial Intelligence |
| A Sandbox for Teaching and Learning in CI for Pre-University and Undergraduate Students |
| Computational Intelligence for Adaptive Learning in Human-Machine Interaction |
Poster sessions
As well as many presentations in the main part of the conference, plenary speakers, tutorials and workshops, some IEEE CEC conferences have also included poster sessions, allowing easy discussion with the originators of the research presenting the poster.Competitions
As well presenting papers or posters participants can develop solutions that address the challenges of [|competitions] that have been accepted by the conference organizers and displayed on the conference website in advance. IEEE CEC 2023 included a number of competitions. Several are shown in the table below. While not all the links to the competition websites are active, abstracts of competition entries are available in the proceedings.| Competition title | Comments |
| Evolutionary Multi-task Optimization | What is the best way to address multi-task optimization using evolutionary computation? |
| Competition on Multiobjective Neural Architecture Search | Neural networks have often been developed independently of research in evolutionary computation. How can their combination address this problem? |
| Evolutionary Computation in the Energy Domain: Operation and Planning Application | Planning and operation of energy services may create complex systems that evolutionary computation can help solve |
Journal to conference sessions
The IEEE publishes the IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation a bimonthly journal for original peer-reviewed papers in the field of evolutionary computation. IEEE CEC conferences may include sessions for presentation about, and discussion regarding, articles already published in this journal. In the Program of the IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation given as a list look for sessions labelled "J2C: Journal to Conference". This is a particularly relevant use of time since the conference and the Journal are published by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society.Relevance
How important are IEEE CEC conferences? Earlier proceedings available in IEEE Xplore appear as online copies of multi-volume printed proceedings. The fact that they were multi-volume proceedings a number of years ago suggests that IEEE CEC conferences had a large number of attendees at that time.More recent proceedings available within IEEE Xplore appear as online proceedings with the potential to print on demand if required. The display of such online proceedings makes it more difficult to compare them with the earlier online proceedings that were comparable with printed proceedings, but the listed programs available on conference websites, as well as the indication of parallel sessions, suggest that IEEE CEC conferences are well-attended and continue to be one of the most important conferences within the field of evolutionary computation.