Special Session - Bilevel Optimization: Methods and Applications

IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC), 02 - 05 July 2023, Chicago, USA
Organizers: Hemant Kumar Singh, Ankur Sinha and Kalyanmoy Deb

Aim and Scope

Bilevel optimization problems are special kind of optimization problems that involve two levels of optimization, namely upper level and lower level. The hierarchical structure of the problem requires that every feasible solution to the upper level problem should satisfy the optimality conditions of the lower level problem. Such a requirement makes bilevel optimization problems difficult to solve. These problems are commonly found in many practical problem-solving tasks, which include optimal control, process optimization, game-playing strategy development, transportation problems, coordination of multi-divisional firms, machine learning and others. Due to the computation expense and other difficulties involved in handling such problems, they are often handled using approximate solution procedures. There is a need for theoretical as well as methodological advancements to handle such problems efficiently. IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) being one of the leading conferences in evolutionary computation will give an opportunity to researchers and practitioners to discuss and exchange ideas for handling bilevel problems, which have yet not been widely explored by the evolutionary computation community. The special session on Bilevel Optimization will bring together researchers working on the following topics:
  • Evolutionary algorithms for bilevel optimization problems
  • Evolutionary algorithms for multi-objective bilevel optimization problems
  • Approximate procedures to handle bilevel optimization problems
  • Hybrid approaches to handle bilevel optimization problems
  • Theoretical results on bilevel optimization problems
  • Bilevel Application Problems
  • Hierarchical decision making

Paper submission information

The special session will follow the same review process and timeline as that for main track for IEEE CEC 2023, check here for the most updated schedule. Note that the review process for CEC 2023 is double-blind, hence all identifying information must be removed in the submitted pdf. The instructions, templates and link to submission are given at the CEC 2023 submission system website. Choose "SS: Bilevel Optimization: Methods and Applications" as the main research topic to submit to the session.
  • Paper submissions close : January 13, 2023
  • Paper reviews: March 03, 2023
  • Paper re-submission : March 24, 2023
  • Paper Final Notifications : March 31, 2023
  • Camera ready paper submission : April 15, 2023

Organizers

  • Hemant Kumar Singh is a Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, Australia. He obtained his B. Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in 2007, and Ph.D. from the University of New South Wales in 2011. He worked in General Electric Aviation during 2011-13 in Engineering Tools Center of Excellence for two years before the current academic appointment in UNSW. His research interest is development of computationally efficient evolutionary computation methods for design optimization with a focus towards engineering problems. He has worked on addressing various challenging problems in the field, such as bilevel optimization, multi- objective optimization, constraint handling and surrogate-assisted optimization. He has more 120 peer-reviewed papers in prominent journals, books and conferences relating to evolutionary computation and design optimization. He is the recipient of the ARC Discovery Project 2019 and 2022, Endeavour Australia Fellowship 2018, Australia Bicentennial Fellowship 2016, the World Congress on Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization ECR fellowship 2015 and the Australian Society for Defence Engineering Prize 2011, among others. He is a Senior member of IEEE and vice-chair of the IEEE CIS Task Force on Bilevel optimization. He has contributed to organization of several conferences such IEEE CEC 2023 (Technical co-chair), CEC 2021 (Program co-chair), SSCI 2020 (Proceedings chair), GECCO 2018-21 (RWACMO Workshop co-chair), ACALCI 2016 (Proceedings/Publicity chair), IES 2016 (Program chair), etc. He is a regular reviewer for several key journals and conferences in the field of evolutionary computation and engineering design. More information is available from his homepage: http://www.mdolab.net/Hemant.

  • Ankur Sinha is an Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, India in the area of Production and Quantitative Methods. He completed his Ph.D. from Aalto University School of Business, Finland, where his dissertation was adjudged as the best thesis for the year 2011. After completing his PhD, he has held visiting positions at the Michigan State University, MI USA and Aalto University, Finland. He has a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India. His research interests are in the areas of Bilevel Optimization, Multi-objective Evolutionary Algorithms and Multi-Criteria Decision Making. He has been a co-chair of the track on Evolutionary Bilevel Optimization at CEC 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2018, 2020-22. He has also offered tutorials on Evolutionary Bilevel Optimization at GECCO 2013, PPSN 2014, CEC 2015, CEC 2017-20. Furthermore, he has chaired sessions on other topics and has been active as a program committee member in the evolutionary computation conferences. More information about his research can be found on his website http://www.iima.ac.in/~asinha/

  • Kalyanmoy Deb is a Koenig Endowed Chair Professor at the Michigan State University in USA. He is the recipient of the prestigious IEEE EC Pioneer Award, TWAS Prize in Engineering Science, Infosys Prize in Engineering and Computer Science, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Engineering Sciences for the year 2005. He has also received the ‘Thomson Citation Laureate Award’ from Thompson Scientific for having highest number of citations in Computer Science during the past ten years in India. He is a fellow of IEEE, Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), Indian National Academy of Sciences, and International Society of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (ISGEC). He has received Fredrick Wilhelm Bessel Research award from Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2003. His main research interests are in the area of computational optimization, modeling and design, and evolutionary algorithms. He has written two textbooks on optimization and more than 550 international journal and conference research papers. He has pioneered and is a leader in the field of evolutionary multi-objective optimization. He is associate editor and in the editorial board of a number of major international journals. More information about his research can be found from http://www.egr.msu.edu/people/profile/kdeb.