Enrique Alba is a professor of

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

at the

University of Málaga The University of Málaga (UMA, ''Universidad de Málaga'') is a public university ranked 23 among all Spanish universities and 683 in the world. It was established in 1972 and has, as of 2016, 30,203 Bachelor students and 2576 on a Master's pr ...

, Spain (currently seconded to the European Research Center in Brussels).

Overview

Prof. Alba achieved his Ph.D. degree on designing and analyzing parallel and distributed

genetic algorithms In computer science and operations research, a genetic algorithm (GA) is a metaheuristic inspired by the process of natural selection that belongs to the larger class of evolutionary algorithms (EA). Genetic algorithms are commonly used to g ...

, now better known as

neuroevolution Neuroevolution, or neuro-evolution, is a form of artificial intelligence that uses evolutionary algorithms to generate artificial neural networks (ANN), parameters, and rules. It is most commonly applied in artificial life, general game playing ...

. His current research interests involve the design and application of

evolutionary algorithms Evolutionary algorithms (EA) reproduce essential elements of the biological evolution in a computer algorithm in order to solve "difficult" problems, at least Approximation, approximately, for which no exact or satisfactory solution methods are k ...

ant colony optimization In computer science and operations research, the ant colony optimization algorithm (ACO) is a probabilistic technique for solving computational problems that can be reduced to finding good paths through graphs. Artificial ants represent multi ...

, particle swarm optimization, and other bio-inspired systems to real problems including

telecommunications Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communication technologies. These means of ...

software engineering Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining Application software, software applications. It involves applying engineering design process, engineering principl ...

combinatorial optimization Combinatorial optimization is a subfield of mathematical optimization that consists of finding an optimal object from a finite set of objects, where the set of feasible solutions is discrete or can be reduced to a discrete set. Typical combina ...

, and

bioinformatics Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field of science that develops methods and Bioinformatics software, software tools for understanding biological data, especially when the data sets are large and complex. Bioinformatics uses biology, ...

among others. The main focus of all his work is on

parallel metaheuristic Parallel metaheuristic is a class of techniques that are capable of reducing both the numerical effort and the run time of a metaheuristic. To this end, concepts and technologies from the field of parallelism in computer science are used to enhanc ...

s (

high-performance computing High-performance computing (HPC) is the use of supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Overview HPC integrates systems administration (including network and security knowledge) and parallel programming into ...

in general) and

multiobjective optimization Multi-objective optimization or Pareto optimization (also known as multi-objective programming, vector optimization, multicriteria optimization, or multiattribute optimization) is an area of MCDM, multiple-criteria decision making that is concerned ...

to deal with human preferences and conflicting criteria in complex problems. In the last 10 years, Prof. Alba's interests in terms of applications focused on

smart cities A smart city is an urban area that uses digital technology to collect data and operate services. Data is collected from citizens, devices, buildings, or cameras. Applications include traffic and transportation systems, power plants, utilities ...

and AI for

quantum computing A quantum computer is a computer that exploits quantum mechanical phenomena. On small scales, physical matter exhibits properties of wave-particle duality, both particles and waves, and quantum computing takes advantage of this behavior using s ...

Work

Prof. Alba leads th
NEO
(Networking and Emerging Optimization) group at the University of Málaga, Spain. His ongoing research includes the fields of ad hoc metropolitan network optimization, optimal design of

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a family of standards to describe the protocols for second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks, as used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and Mobile broadband modem, mobile broadba ...

networks,

logistics Logistics is the part of supply chain management that deals with the efficient forward and reverse flow of goods, services, and related information from the point of origin to the Consumption (economics), point of consumption according to the ...

vehicle routing The vehicle routing problem (VRP) is a combinatorial optimization and integer programming problem which asks "What is the optimal set of routes for a fleet of vehicles to traverse in order to deliver to a given set of customers?" It generalises ...

natural language A natural language or ordinary language is a language that occurs naturally in a human community by a process of use, repetition, and change. It can take different forms, typically either a spoken language or a sign language. Natural languages ...

tagging,

, DNA fragment assembly, gene

microarrays A microarray is a multiplex lab-on-a-chip. Its purpose is to simultaneously detect the expression of thousands of biological interactions. It is a two-dimensional array on a solid substrate—usually a glass slide or silicon thin-film cell� ...

, cutting/packing,

software testing Software testing is the act of checking whether software satisfies expectations. Software testing can provide objective, independent information about the Quality (business), quality of software and the risk of its failure to a User (computin ...

and validation, and in general

combinatorial Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and as an end to obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many ...

problems lying in the base of real-world problems. New fields like multiobjective techniques with high scalability, grid/P2P/Internet platforms, dynamic optimization of problems whose definition change in time, and heterogeneous algorithms are dealt with as part both of basic and applied research. He has been involved in many projects and Ph.D. theses dealing with the construction and utilization of

vehicular ad hoc network A Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a proposed type of mobile ad hoc network (MANET) involving road vehicles. VANETs were first proposed in 2001 as " car-to-car ad-hoc mobile communication and networking" applications, where networks could be f ...

s, as well as has started a whole line of research in

Bio-inspired Bioinspiration refers to the human development of novel materials, devices, structures, and behaviors inspired by solutions found in biological organisms, where they have evolved and been refined over millions of years. The goal is to improve model ...

techniques, and

metaheuristics In computer science and mathematical optimization, a metaheuristic is a higher-level procedure or heuristic designed to find, generate, tune, or select a heuristic (partial search algorithm) that may provide a sufficiently good solution to an opt ...

for

and AI for

. As for the science behind the applications, Prof. Alba and his group are dealing mainly with

, either bio-inspired or not, and also hybridization with other (possibly exact) methods. Specifically,

, particle swarm, ant colonies,

simulated annealing Simulated annealing (SA) is a probabilistic technique for approximating the global optimum of a given function. Specifically, it is a metaheuristic to approximate global optimization in a large search space for an optimization problem. ...

branch and bound Branch and bound (BB, B&B, or BnB) is a method for solving optimization problems by breaking them down into smaller sub-problems and using a bounding function to eliminate sub-problems that cannot contain the optimal solution. It is an algorithm ...

differential evolution Differential evolution (DE) is an evolutionary algorithm to optimize a problem by iteratively trying to improve a candidate solution with regard to a given measure of quality. Such methods are commonly known as metaheuristics as they make few ...

, variable neighbourhood search, and related solvers are used. The link to machine learning for feature selection, prediction, prescription, and the theory behind the design and complexity of algorithms has led to numerous publications in top venues, international projects, and industry contracts (se
here
for more info). Prof. Alba has published seven books on metaheuristics and bio-inspired techniques, more than 130 papers indexed in ISI impact journals, and more than 300 conference papers. He has raised funds and coordinated several Spanish national research projects like TRACER, OPLINK, M*, DIRICOM, roadME, moveON, 6city, HUMOVE, ECO-IOT. His work has achieved internationalization via his participation in bilateral projects with

INRIA The National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria) () is a French national research institution focusing on computer science and applied mathematics. It was created under the name French Institute for Research in Comp ...

like PERFOM, MOID, Robust&Green, and European CELTIC projects like CARLINK, FP7 COADVISE, fiQare, and TAILOR. He holds active collaborations by joining publications and exchanges with more than 20 international universities and labs, and his research in Málaga is also innovating with industrial transferences to several companies including TARTEC S.A., OPTIMI, Arelance, NOVASOFT, ETRA I+D, Moviquity, VTT, Synergiums, EMERGYA, SECMOTIC, ACTECO, EUROSOTERRADOS, TORCAL, JUMA and others. Prof. Alba has also led the one-million lab 6sim for harnessing modern GPUs in the fields of AI and Simulation. Alba works in the program committee of leading conferences in several fields, including ACM GECCO, IEEE CEC, PPSN, EvoStar, IPDPS, as well as organizing international events frequently. He also has worked as a reviewer for the IEEE Transactions Journals on Evolutionary Computation, Education, and Parallel and Distributed Systems. Besides, he is an active reviewer for SMC, JPDC, PARCO, Journal of Heuristics, JMMA, EJOR, Computer Communications, MIT

Evolutionary Computation Evolutionary computation from computer science is a family of algorithms for global optimization inspired by biological evolution, and the subfield of artificial intelligence and soft computing studying these algorithms. In technical terms ...

, Software: Practice and Experience, and Information Sciences, to name a few. According to

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of Academic publishing, scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in Beta release, beta in November 2004, th ...

, as of 2024 he has an

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with success indicators such as winning t ...

of 69 and more than 22,000 citations to his work. From September 2021 Prof. Alba is seconded to Brussels to work in the

European Research Council The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientific ...

(ERC) for managing funds for supporting computer science in Europe and around the world.

References

External links

Enrique Alba home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Alba, Enrique 1968 births Living people People from the Province of Málaga Spanish computer scientists Academic staff of the University of Málaga

Overview

Work

See also

References

Further reading

External links