EvoStar, or Evo*, is an international scientific event devoted to

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 ...

held in Europe. Its structure has evolved over time and it currently comprises four conferences: EuroGP the annual conference on

Genetic Programming Genetic programming (GP) is an evolutionary algorithm, an artificial intelligence technique mimicking natural evolution, which operates on a population of programs. It applies the genetic operators selection (evolutionary algorithm), selection a ...

, EvoApplications, the International Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary Computation, EvoCOP, European Conference on Evolutionary Computation in Combinatorial Optimisation, and EvoMUSART, the International Conference on Computational Intelligence in Music, Sound, Art and Design. According to a 2016 study EvoApplications is a Q1 conference, while EuroGP and EvoCOP are both Q2. In 2021, EuroGP, EvoApplications and EvoCOP obtained a CORE rank B. Other conferences in the area include the ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO), the IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) and the bi-annual

Parallel Problem Solving from Nature Parallel Problem Solving from Nature, or PPSN, is a research conference focusing on the topic of natural computing. Other conferences in the area include the ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO), the IEEE Congress on E ...

(PPSN).

History

Originally run under the name of EvoWorkshops, the event was an outcome of EvoNet, the Network of Excellence in Evolutionary Computing, funded by the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...

under the Information Societies Technology Programme,

FP5 The Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development, also called Framework Programmes or abbreviated FP1 to FP9, are funding programmes created by the European Union/European Commission to support and foster research in the Europe ...

-IST. EvoNet was coordinated by Terry Fogarty and managed by Jennifer Willies, both at

Edinburgh Napier University Edinburgh Napier University () is a public university in Edinburgh, Scotland. Napier Technical College, the predecessor of the university, was founded in 1964, taking its name from 16th-century Scottish mathematician and philosopher John Napie ...

at the time, and had more than 100 participating nodes. After EvoNet funding ended, support was provided by Edinburgh Napier University to help EvoStar to continue over the years. In 2014 the ''SPECIES'' Society was set up to provide an appropriate legal structure for future organisation and support of the EvoStar conferences. SPECIES support of EvoStar became effective in 2017, with Edinburgh Napier University taking a sponsoring role.

Editions

The first edition was held in Paris in 1998. Subsequent editions took place in Göteborg (1999), Edinburgh (2000), Lake Como (2001), Kinsale (2002), Essex (2003), Coimbra (2004), Lausanne (2005), Budapest (2006), Valencia (2007, first edition under the name EvoStar), Napoli (2008), Tübingen (2009), Istanbul (2010), Torino (2011), Málaga (2012), Vienna (2013), Granada (2014), Copenhagen (2015), Porto (2016), Amsterdam (2017), Parma (2018) and Leipzig (2019). In 2020, Evostar was to be held in Seville, Spain, but due to

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, it was finally held as an online conference. In 2021 Evostar was expected to be held in Seville, but was again held as an online conference. In 2022 Evostar was held in Madrid, Spain, as a hybrid event (in person and online). It was followed in 2023 by

Brno Brno ( , ; ) is a Statutory city (Czech Republic), city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava (river), Svitava and Svratka (river), Svratka rivers, Brno has about 403,000 inhabitants, making ...

in the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...

, and in 2024 by

Aberystwyth Aberystwyth (; ) is a University town, university and seaside town and a community (Wales), community in Ceredigion, Wales. It is the largest town in Ceredigion and from Aberaeron, the county's other administrative centre. In 2021, the popula ...

, both again in person and via the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

. In 2025 EvoStar will take place in

Trieste Trieste ( , ; ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital and largest city of the Regions of Italy#Autonomous regions with special statute, autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, as well as of the Province of Trieste, ...

Hybrid event (2024)

The 27th edition took place during 3-5 April and was held in

but also

online In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity, and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but (especially when expressed as "on lin ...

(

Zoom Zoom may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Film * ''Zoom'' (2006 film), starring Tim Allen * ''Zoom'' (2015 film), a Canada-Brazil film by Pedro Morelli * ''Zoom'' (2016 Kannada film), a Kannada film * ''Zoom'' (2016 Sinhala film), a Sr ...

).
EuroGP

Bing Xue Bing Xue is a New Zealand computer scientist, and is a full professor at Victoria University of Wellington, specialising in machine learning, artificial intelligence and data visualisation. Academic career Xue earned a Bachelor of Science deg ...

, Mario Giacobini, Luca Manzoni
EvoCOP
Thomas Stützle and Markus Wagner
EvoMusArt
Colin Johnson, Sérgio Rebelo and Iria Santos
EvoApplications
Stephen Smith, João Correia and Christian Cintrano. For the third time there was a joint event Evolutionary computation and machine learning
(EML)
between EuroGP and EvoApps: Penousal Machado and Mengjie Zhang. There were two keynotes: Jon Timmis, vice chancellor of

Aberystwyth University Aberystwyth University () is a Public university, public Research university, research university in Aberystwyth, Wales. Aberystwyth was a founding member institution of the former federal University of Wales. The university has over 8,000 stude ...

, presented "Evolution, immunity and robots: An interdisciplinary adventure", on his research inspired by the immune system and natural swarms. The conference was closed by Sabine Hauert "Evolving swarms across scales: from nanomedicine to city logistics". Between these two invited plenary talks, Marc Schoenauer moderated a plenary "Coffee" with Dario Floreano and

Hod Lipson Hod Lipson (born 1967) is an Israeli - American robotics engineer. He is the director of Columbia University's Creative Machines Lab. Lipson's work focuses on evolutionary robotics, design automation, rapid prototyping, artificial life, and creat ...

, joint winners of this year's
Julian Francis Miller award

Hybrid event (2023)

The 26th edition took place during 12-14 April and was held mostly in

but also

(

and

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

).
EuroGP
Gisele Pappa, Mario Giacobini, Zdenek Vasicek
EvoCOP
Leslie Pérez Cáceres, Thomas Stützle
EvoMusArt
Colin Johnson, Nereida Rodríguez-Fernández, Sérgio M. Rebelo
EvoApplications
João Correia, Stephen Smith, Raneem Qaddoura. For the second time there was a joint event Evolutionary computation and machine learning between EuroGP and EvoApps, Wolfgang Banzhaf and Penousal Machado. This time there were three keynotes
Marek Vacha
"

Gregor Mendel Gregor Johann Mendel Order of Saint Augustine, OSA (; ; ; 20 July 1822 – 6 January 1884) was an Austrian Empire, Austrian biologist, meteorologist, mathematician, Augustinians, Augustinian friar and abbot of St Thomas's Abbey, Brno, St. Thom ...

: a story beyond peas" and Evelyne Lutton "Exploring the Interplay of Cooperation and Competition in evolutionary computation". This year they were joined by Susan Stepney, the winner of th
Julian Francis Miller award

Posters A poster is a large sheet that is placed either on a public space to promote something or on a wall as decoration. Typically, posters include both textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or wholly text. ...

were on site and on line vi
Gather Town

Hybrid event (2022)

The 25th edition took place on 20-22 April and was held in

Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...

and

(

and

).
EuroGP
Eric Medvet, Gisele Pappa,

EvoCOP
Leslie Pérez Cáceres, Sébastien Verel
EvoMusArt
Tiago Martins, Nereida Rodríguez-Fernández, Sérgio M. Rebelo
EvoApplications
Juan Luis Jiménez Laredo, J. Ignacio Hidalgo, Kehinde Oluwatoyin Babaagba. For the first time joint event Evolutionary computation and machine learning between EuroGP and EvoApps, Wolfgang Banzhaf and Penousal Machado. As usual there were two keynotes: Gabriela Ochoa "Illuminating search spaces" on
YouTube
and Pedro Larrañaga "Estimation of Distribution Algorithms in Machine Learning" o
YouTube

were on site and on line vi
Gather Town

Online event (2021)

The 24th edition took place on 7–9 April and was held as an online event. Many of the online presentations were recorded and are available via the organisers' "SPECIES Society" YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/SPECIESSociety/featured channel. EuroGP: Ting Hu, Nuno Lourenço, Eric Medvet. EvoApps: Pedro Castillo, Juanlu Jiménez-Laredo. EvoCOP: Christine Zarges, Sébastien Verel. EvoMUSART: Juan Romero, Tiago Martins, Nereida Rodríguez-Fernández. Late-breaking Abstracts: A.M. Mora, A.I. Esparcia-Alcázar https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.11804

Online event (2020)

The 23rd edition took place on 15–17 April and was for the first time in history held as an online event. Sessions were available via

videoconferencing Videotelephony (also known as videoconferencing or video calling) is the use of audio signal, audio and video for simultaneous two-way communication. Today, videotelephony is widespread. There are many terms to refer to videotelephony. ''Vide ...

for registered participants, who could remotely present their work and interact during question time. Conference program chairs were Ting Hu and Nuno Lourenço for EuroGP, Pedro Castillo-Valdivieso for EvoApplications, Luís Paquete and Christine Zarges for EvoCOP and Anikó Ekárt and Juan Romero for EvoMUSART. Anna Esparcia-Alcázar was Coordinator, João Correia was Publicity Chair and Francisco Chicano was Electronic Media Chair. Invited speakers were José Antonio Lozano (talk on The Essence of Combinatorial Optimization Problems, video available on) and Roberto Serra (Dynamically Critical Networks)

Leipzig (2019)

The 22nd edition took place from 24 to 26 April in the premises of

Leipzig University of Applied Sciences The Leipzig University of Applied Sciences, in German the Hochschule für Technik, Wirtschaft und Kultur (HTWK), is a Fachhochschule in Leipzig, in the Saxony region of Germany. It offers a combination of practice-oriented teaching and applicati ...

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

, with Hendrik Richter as local chair. Conference program chairs were Lukas Sekanina and Ting Hu for EuroGP, Paul Kaufmann and Pedro Castillo-Valdivieso for EvoApplications, Arnaud Liefooghe and Luís Paquete for EvoCOP and Anikó Ekárt and Antonios Liapis for EvoMUSART. Anna Esparcia-Alcázar was Coordinator and Pablo García Sánchez was Publicity Chair. A total of 98 papers, short papers and late-breaking abstracts were presented in 22 conference sessions plus a general poster session The opening invited speaker was Risto Miikkulainen (on Creative AI through Evolutionary Computation) while Manja Marz gave the closing keynote (on

RNA Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a polymeric molecule that is essential for most biological functions, either by performing the function itself (non-coding RNA) or by forming a template for the production of proteins (messenger RNA). RNA and deoxyrib ...

evolution with long read

sequencing In genetics and biochemistry, sequencing means to determine the primary structure (sometimes incorrectly called the primary sequence) of an unbranched biopolymer. Sequencing results in a symbolic linear depiction known as a sequence which succ ...

methods).

Parma (2018)

The 2018 edition took place on April 4–6 in the premises of the

Università degli Studi di Parma The University of Parma () is a public university located in Parma, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. Organized into nine departments, it is one of the oldest universities in the world. As of 2016, it had approximately 26,000 students. History During the ...

Parma Parma (; ) is a city in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna known for its architecture, Giuseppe Verdi, music, art, prosciutto (ham), Parmesan, cheese and surrounding countryside. With a population of 198,986 inhabitants as of 2025, ...

, with Stefano Cagnoni as local chair. Conference program chairs were Mauro Castelli and Lukas Sekanina for EuroGP, Kevin Sim and Paul Kaufmann for EvoApplications, Arnaud Liefooghe and Manuel López-Ibáñez for EvoCOP and Juan Romero and Antonios Liapis for EvoMUSART. Coordinators were Jennifer Willies and Anna Esparcia-Alcázar and Pablo García Sánchez was Publicity Chair. A total of 116 papers, short papers and late-breaking abstracts were presented in 24 conference sessions plus a general poster session. The opening invited speaker was Una-May O'Reilly (whose talk versed on adversarial dynamics), while Penousal Machado delivered the closing keynote (on evolution art and sex).

Amsterdam (2017)

The 20th edition took place on 19–21 April in De Bazel in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

(Netherlands) with Evert Haasdijk and Jacqueline Heinerman serving as local chair. Conference program chairs were James McDermott and Mauro Castelli for EuroGP; Bin Hu and Manuel López-Ibáñez for EvoCOP; João Correia and Vic Ciesielski for EvoMUSART; Giovanni Squillero for EvoApplications. Lukáš Sekanina, Antonios Liapis, and Kevin Sim served as Publication Chairs of the different events. Pablo García Sánchez was the Publicity Chair, while Jennifer Willies, the Coordinator. The invited speakers were Kenneth De Jong (''EC: Past, Present and Future'') and Arthur Kordon (''Evolutionary Computation in Industry: A Realistic Overview''). A total of 210 papers were presented: 108 in EvoApplications, 34 in EuroGP, 39 in EvoCOP, and 29 in EvoMUSART.

Porto (2016)

The 19th edition took place between March 30 and April 1 in Seminário de Vilar Rua Arcediago Van Zeller in

Porto Porto (), also known in English language, English as Oporto, is the List of cities in Portugal, second largest city in Portugal, after Lisbon. It is the capital of the Porto District and one of the Iberian Peninsula's major urban areas. Porto c ...

(Portugal) with Penousal Machado and Ernesto Costa serving as local chair. Conference program chairs were Malcolm Heywood and James McDermott for EuroGP; Bin Hu and Francisco Chicano for EvoCOP; Colin Johnson and Vic Ciesielski for EvoMUSART; Giovanni Squillero for EvoApplications. Mauro Castelli, João Correia, and Paolo Burelli were Publication Chairs of the different events. Pablo García Sánchez was the Publicity Chair, while Jennifer Willies, the Coordinator. The invited speakers were Richard Forsyth (''The evolution of BEAGLE: Confessions of a mongrel rule-breeder'') and Kenneth Sörensen (''Metaphors in metaheuristics - a symptom of a deeper ailment?''). A total of 218 papers were presented: 113 in EvoApplications, 36 in EuroGP, 44 in EvoCOP, and 25 in EvoMUSART.

Copenhagen (2015)

The 18th edition took place between 08 and 10 April in the

National Museum of Denmark The National Museum of Denmark (Nationalmuseet) in Copenhagen is Denmark, Denmark's largest museum of cultural history, comprising the histories of Danish and foreign cultures, alike. The museum's main building is located a short distance from S ...

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of 1.4 million in the Urban area of Copenhagen, urban area. The city is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the ...

(Denmark) with Paolo Burelli and Sebastian Risi serving as local chair. Conference program chairs were Penousal Machado and Malcolm Heywood for EuroGP; Gabriela Ochoa and Francisco Chicano for EvoCOP; Colin Johnson and Adrián Carballal for EvoMUSART; Antonio Mora for EvoApplications. Giovanni Squillero, João Correia, and James McDermott were Publication Chairs of the different events. Pablo García Sánchez was the Publicity Chair, while Jennifer Willies, the Coordinator. The invited speakers were

Pierre-Yves Oudeyer Dr. Pierre-Yves Oudeyer is Research Director at the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (Inria) and head of the Inria and Ensta-ParisTech FLOWERS team. Before, he has been a permanent researcher in Sony Computer Scie ...

(''Open-Source Baby Robots for Science, Education and Art'') and

Paulien Hogeweg Paulien Hogeweg (born 1943) is a Dutch theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher studying biological systems as dynamic information processing systems at many interconnected levels. In 1970, together with Ben Hesper, she defined the t ...

(''Non-random random mutations: Evolution of Genotype-Phenoptype mapping''). A total of 133 papers were presented: 73 in EvoApplications, 18 in EuroGP, 19 in EvoCOP, and 23 in EvoMUSART.

Málaga (2012)

EvoStar 2012 took place in

Málaga Málaga (; ) is a Municipalities in Spain, municipality of Spain, capital of the Province of Málaga, in the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia. With a population of 591,637 in 2024, it is the second-most populo ...

(Spain), in the premises of the School of Computer Science and Telecommunications (Spanish: ''ETSI Informática y Telecomunicaciones'') of 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 ...

, 11–13 April. This edition was locally chaired by Carlos Cotta, and comprised five conferences, namely EuroGP, EvoCOP, EvoMUSART, EvoApplications (which in turn comprised 11 tracks), and EvoBIO, as well as a novel event termed EvoTransfer, oriented to present prospects for practical applications to an audience composed of company representatives. The global conference programme was composed of 144 articles, arranged in 42 sessions, plus two plenary talks by Dario Floreano (on bio-inspired flying robots) and by Marco Tomassini (on

evolutionary game theory Evolutionary game theory (EGT) is the application of game theory to evolving populations in biology. It defines a framework of contests, strategies, and analytics into which Darwinism, Darwinian competition can be modelled. It originated in 1973 wi ...

). During the conference gala dinner held in St. Katherine's Castle ''Castillo de Santa Catalina'', Günther R. Raidl received the 2012 Award for Outstanding Contribution to EC in Europe for his championing role in evolutionary combinatorial optimization.

Torino (2011)

EvoStar 2011 took place in

Turin Turin ( , ; ; , then ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is main ...

(Italy), in the premises of th
Molecular Biotechnology Center
of the

University of Turin The University of Turin (Italian language, Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Torino'', UNITO) is a public university, public research university in the city of Turin, in the Piedmont (Italy), Piedmont region of Italy. It is one of the List ...

, 27–29 April. This edition was locally chaired by Mario Giacobini, and comprised four conferences, namely EuroGP, EvoCOP, EvoBio, EvoApplications (which in turn comprised 13 tracks). The global conference programme was composed of 157 articles (29 in EuroGP, 22 in EvoCOP,Peter Merz, Jin-Kao Hao: Evolutionary Computation in Combinatorial Optimization - 11th European Conference, EvoCOP 2011, Torino, Italy, April 27–29, 2011. Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 6622, Springer 2011, 19 in EvoBioClara Pizzuti, Marylyn D. Ritchie, Mario Giacobini: Evolutionary Computation, Machine Learning and Data Mining in Bioinformatics - 9th European Conference, EvoBIO 2011, Torino, Italy, April 27–29, 2011. Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 6623, Springer 2011, and 87 in EvoApplicationCecilia Di Chio, Stefano Cagnoni, Carlos Cotta, Marc Ebner, Anikó Ekárt, Anna Esparcia-Alcázar, Juan Julián Merelo Guervós, Ferrante Neri, Mike Preuss, Hendrik Richter, Julian Togelius, Georgios N. Yannakakis: Applications of Evolutionary Computation - EvoApplications 2011: EvoCOMPLEX, EvoGAMES, EvoIASP, EvoINTELLIGENCE, EvoNUM, and EvoSTOC, Torino, Italy, April 27–29, 2011, Proceedings, Part I. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 6624, Springer 2011, Cecilia Di Chio, Anthony Brabazon, Gianni A. Di Caro, Rolf Drechsler, Muddassar Farooq, Jörn Grahl, Gary Greenfield, Christian Prins, Juan Romero, Giovanni Squillero, Ernesto Tarantino, Andrea Tettamanzi, Neil Urquhart, A. Sima Etaner-Uyar: Applications of Evolutionary Computation - EvoApplications 2011: EvoCOMNET, EvoFIN, EvoHOT, EvoMUSART, EvoSTIM, and EvoTRANSLOG, Torino, Italy, April 27–29, 2011, Proceedings, Part II. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 6625, Springer 2011, ), plus two plenary talks by

Craig Reynolds (computer graphics) Craig W. Reynolds (born March 15, 1953), is an artificial life and computer graphics expert, who created the Boids artificial life simulation in 1986. Reynolds worked on the film ''Tron'' (1982) as a scene programmer, and on ''Batman Returns'' (19 ...

(on Goal-oriented texture synthesis) and by

Jean-Pierre Changeux Jean-Pierre Changeux (; born 6 April 1936) is a French neuroscientist known for his research in several fields of biology, from the structure and function of proteins (with a focus on the allosteric proteins), to the early development of the ner ...

(on Models of the

brain The brain is an organ (biology), organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It consists of nervous tissue and is typically located in the head (cephalization), usually near organs for ...

: from

genes In biology, the word gene has two meanings. The Mendelian gene is a basic unit of heredity. The molecular gene is a sequence of nucleotides in DNA that is transcribed to produce a functional RNA. There are two types of molecular genes: protei ...

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of a state or object, either internal to oneself or in one's external environment. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations, and debate among philosophers, scientists, an ...

Istanbul (2010)

EvoStar 2010 took place in

Istanbul Istanbul is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, constituting the country's economic, cultural, and historical heart. With Demographics of Istanbul, a population over , it is home to 18% of the Demographics ...

(Turkey), in the premises of the

ITU Suleyman Demirel Cultural Center The International Telecommunication Union (ITU)In the other common languages of the ITU: * * is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information and communication technologies. It was established ...

of the

Istanbul Technical University Istanbul Technical University, also known as Technical University of Istanbul (, commonly referred to as İTÜ), is an public university, public technical university located in Istanbul, Turkey. It is the world's third-oldest technical university ...

, 7–9 April. The conference was locally chaired by Şima Uyar. Stephen Dignum served as Publicity Chair and Jennifer Willies as coordinator. It consisted of three conferences, EuroGP, EvoCOP and EvoBIO, a series of 11 EvoWorkshops and EvoPhD, the Graduate Student Workshop on Evolutionary Computation. Invited plenary speakers were

Kevin Warwick Kevin Warwick (born 9 February 1954) is an English engineer and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) at Coventry University. He is known for his studies on direct interfaces between computer systems and the human nervous system, and has also done ...

, Jens Gottlieb and Günther Raidl.

Naples (2008)

The 2008 edition of EvoStar took place in

Naples Naples ( ; ; ) is the Regions of Italy, regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 908,082 within the city's administrative limits as of 2025, while its Metropolitan City of N ...

(Italy), in the premises of th
Centro Congressi Federico II
of the

University of Naples Federico II The University of Naples Federico II (; , ) is a public university, public research university in Naples, Campania, Italy. Established in 1224 and named after its founder, Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II, it is the oldest public, s ...

, 26–28 March. The conference was locally chaired by Ivanoe De Falco, Antonio Della Cioppa and Ernesto Tarantino. Anna I Esparcia-Alcázar served as Publicity Chair and Jennifer Willies as coordinator. It consisted of three conferences, EuroGP, EvoCOP and EvoBIO, and a series of 8 EvoWorkshops. Invited plenary speaker were

Hans-Paul Schwefel Hans-Paul Schwefel (born December 4, 1940) is a German computer scientist and professor emeritus at University of Dortmund (now Dortmund University of Technology), where he held the chair of systems analysis from 1985 until 2006. He is one of the ...

and Stefano Nolfi.

Valencia (2007)

The first edition under the umbrella name EvoStar took place in

Valencia Valencia ( , ), formally València (), is the capital of the Province of Valencia, province and Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Valencian Community, the same name in Spain. It is located on the banks of the Turia (r ...

(Spain) in the Universitat Politécnica de Valencia (UPV), with Anna I Esparcia-Alcázar as local chair, Leonardo Vanneschi as Publicity Chair and Jennifer Willies as coordinator. It consisted of three conferences, EuroGP, EvoCOP and EvoBIO and the series of EvoWorkshops. Marc Ebner and Michael O'Neill were co-chairs of EuroGP, with Anikó Ekárt as Publication chair; Carlos Cotta and Jano van Hemert were co-chairs of EvoCOP; Elena Marchiori, Jason H Moore and Jagath C. Rajapakse were co-chairs of EvoBIO and Mario Giacobini was coordinator of EvoWorkshops, which consisted of seven workshops: EvoCOMNET, EvoFIN, EvoIASP, EvoINTERACTION, EvoMUSART, EvoSTOC and EvoTRANSLOG. A total of 163 papers were presented: 35 in EuroGP, 21 in EvoCOP, 28 in EvoBIO and 79 in EvoWorkshops. Invited speakers were Ricard Solé,

Alan Bundy Alan Richard Bundy (born 18 May 1947) is a professor at the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh,http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/bundy/ Professor Alan Bundy's website known for his contributions to automated reasoning, especially ...

and

Chris Adami Christoph Carl Herbert "Chris" Adami (born August 30, 1962) is a German-American professor of microbiology and molecular genetics, as well as professor of physics and astronomy, at Michigan State University. He is a core faculty member of the Eco ...

Areas

The areas covered include both theoretical aspects and applications of

, in particular

genetic programming Genetic programming (GP) is an evolutionary algorithm, an artificial intelligence technique mimicking natural evolution, which operates on a population of programs. It applies the genetic operators selection (evolutionary algorithm), selection a ...

, and hybridization with other

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 ...

Competitions

A number of competitions have been held throughout the history of EvoStar, specifically i
2010
an
2011
These have been frequently related to the evolutionary games and arts and design areas. Of particular relevance has been the Mario AI Championship

Art exhibitions

The first curated

evolutionary art Evolutionary art is a branch of generative art, in which the artist does not do the work of constructing the artwork, but rather lets a system do the construction. In evolutionary art, initially generated art is put through an iterated process o ...

exhibition linked to EvoStar was held in Budapest in 2006, in the ArtPool P60 space, and run under the title ''Process revealed''. Nineteen works from 8 different countries were presented, with Janis Jefferies and Tim Blackwell acting as curators. The following year, ''ArtEscapes - Variations of life in the media arts'' was launched in Valencia in conjunction with the 2007 edition of EvoStar, and spanning 5 more weeks. Anna I Esparcia-Alcázar and Paulo Urbano curated 22 works, with artists coming from 11 countries around the globe.

Proceedings

Proceedings of the EvoStar conferences are published by

Springer Springer or springers may refer to: Publishers * Springer Science+Business Media, aka Springer International Publishing, a worldwide publishing group founded in 1842 in Germany formerly known as Springer-Verlag. ** Springer Nature, a multinationa ...

in the

Lecture Notes in Computer Science ''Lecture Notes in Computer Science'' is a series of computer science books published by Springer Science+Business Media since 1973. Overview The series contains proceedings, post-proceedings, monographs, and Festschrifts. In addition, tutorials ...

(LNCS) series.
EuroGP

EvoAPPLICATIONS
(formerl
evoWorkshops

EvoCOP- EvoMUSART
* 2023 LNCS 13986: EuroGP 2023, LNCS 13989: EvoAPPS 2023, LNCS 13987: EvoCOP 2023, LNCS 13988: EvoMUSART 2023 * 2022 LNCS 13223: EuroGP 2022, LNCS 13224: EvoAPPS 2022, LNCS 13222: EvoCOP 2022, LNCS 13221: EvoMUSART 2022 * 2021 LNCS 12691: EuroGP 2021, LNCS 12694: EvoAPPS 2021, 12692: EvoCOP 2021, LNCS 12693: EvoMUSART 2021 * 2020 LNCS 12101: EuroGP 2020, LNCS 12104: EvoAPPS 2020, LNCS 12102: EvoCOP 2020, LNCS 12103: EvoMUSART 2020 * 2019 LNCS 11451: EuroGP 2019, LNCS 11454: EvoAPPS 2019, LNCS 11452: EvoCOP 2019, LNCS 11453: EvoMUSART 2019 * 2018 LNCS 10781: EuroGP 2018, LNCS 10784: EvoAPPS 2018, LNCS 10782: EvoCOP 2018, LNCS 10783: EvoMUSART 2018 * 2017 LNCS 10196: EuroGP 2017, LNCS 10197: EvoCOP 2017, LNCS 10198: EvoMUSART 2017, LNCS 10199: EvoAPPS 2017 (I), LNCS 10200: EvoAPPS 2017 (II) * 2016 LNCS 9594: EuroGP 2016, LNCS 9595: EvoCOP 2016, LNCS 9596: EvoMUSART 2016, LNCS 9597: EvoApplications 2016, Part I, LNCS 9598: EvoApplications 2016, Part II, * 2015 LNCS 9025 EuroGP 2015, LNCS 9026 EvoCOP 2015, LNCS 9027 EvoMUSART 2015, LNCS 9028 EvoApplications 2015, * 2014 LNCS 8599 EuroGP 2014 LNCS 8600 EvoCOP 2014 LNCS 8601 EvoMUSART 2014 LNCS 8602 EvoApplications 2014 * 2013 LNCS 7831 - 7835 * 2012 LNCS 7244 EuroGP 2012, 7245 EvoCOP 2012,Jin-Kao Hao, Martin Middendorf: Evolutionary Computation in Combinatorial Optimization - 12th European Conference, EvoCOP 2012, Málaga, Spain, April 11–13, 2012. Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 7245, Springer 2012, 7246 EvoBIO 2012,Mario Giacobini, Leonardo Vanneschi, William S. Bush: Evolutionary Computation, Machine Learning and Data Mining in Bioinformatics - 10th European Conference, EvoBIO 2012, Málaga, Spain, April 11–13, 2012. Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 7246, Springer 2012, 7247 EvoMUSART 2012,Penousal Machado, Juan Romero, Adrián Carballal: Evolutionary and Biologically Inspired Music, Sound, Art and Design - First International Conference, EvoMUSART 2012, Málaga, Spain, April 11–13, 2012. Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 7247, Springer 2012, 7248 EvoApplications 2012Cecilia Di Chio, Alexandros Agapitos, Stefano Cagnoni, Carlos Cotta, Francisco Fernández de Vega, Gianni A. Di Caro, Rolf Drechsler, Anikó Ekárt, Anna Isabel Esparcia-Alcázar, Muddassar Farooq, William B. Langdon, Juan J. Merelo Guervós, Mike Preuss, Hendrik Richter, Sara Silva, Anabela Simões, Giovanni Squillero, Ernesto Tarantino, Andrea Tettamanzi, Julian Togelius, Neil Urquhart, Sima Uyar, Georgios N. Yannakakis: Applications of Evolutionary Computation - EvoApplications 2012: EvoCOMNET, EvoCOMPLEX, EvoFIN, EvoGAMES, EvoHOT, EvoIASP, EvoNUM, EvoPAR, EvoRISK, EvoSTIM, and EvoSTOC, Málaga, Spain, April 11–13, 2012, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 7248, Springer 2012, * 2011 LNCS 6621 EuroGP 2011 LNCS 6622 EvoCOP 2011 LNCS 6623 EvoBIO 2011 LNCS 6624 EvoApplications 2011 (part I) LNCS 6625 EvoApplications 2011 (part II) * 2010 LNCS 6021, 6022, 6023, 6024, 6025 * 2009 LNCS 5481 - 5484 * 2008 LNCS 4971, 4972, 4973, 4974 * 2007 LNCS 4445, 4446, 4447, 4448 * 2006 LNCS 3905, 3906 3907 * 2005 LNCS 3447, 3448, 3449 * 2004 LNCS 3003, 3004, 3005 * 2003 LNCS 2610, 2611 * 2002 LNCS 2278, 2279 * 2001 LNCS 2037 2038 * 2000 LNCS 1802, 1803 * 1999 LNCS 1596, 1598 * 1998 LNCS 1391

Current chairs

* EuroGP: Bing Xue & Luca Manzoni * EvoApplications: Emma Hart & Pablo García-Sánchez * EvoCOP: Markus Wagner & Martin Krejca * EvoMUSART: Penousal Machado & Colin Johnson * Coordinator: Anna Esparcia-Alcázar * Publicity chair: João Correia * Web & Media chair: Francis Chicano * Electronic resources coordinator: Nuno Lourenço

EvoStar Award

The EvoStar Award for Outstanding Contribution to Evolutionary Computation in Europe was established in 2006 and its first recipient was Jennifer Willies. Sara Silva EvoStar Award recipient 2018

The full list of recipients is as follows:

Keynote speakers

Outstanding Students

The EvoStar Outstanding Student Mentions were established in 2018 in order to recognise the good work of EvoStar students, who represent the future of the evolutionary computation community. Papers were selected that had obtained an overall review score greater than or equal to a given mark or that had been nominated for a Best Paper Award, and whose first author was a student registered to attend EvoStar. In 2020 a new category was added, Recent Graduates, to include authors who had carried out the work presented as students and who had graduated since the time of submission. Following these rules the Outstanding Students mentions were as follows: * 2018 : Filipe Assunção, Mosab Bazargani, Alexander Berman, Sondre Engebraten, Tiago Martins, Almuth Meier, Rafaela Priscila Cruz Moreira, Robert Jacob Smith, Sara Tari, Sarah Louise Thomson, Laura Sani * 2019 : Benedikte Wallace, Hoang Thanh Le, Illya Bakurov, Jitka Kocnova, Jonathan Kelly, Jörg Stork, Muhammad Sheraz Anjum, Nam Le, Riccardo Gervasi, Robert Smith, Samaneh Azari, Sarah L. Thomson, Shima Afzali, Timothy Atkinson, Timon van de Velde * 2020 : Kehinde Babaagba, Leonardo Lucio Custode, Takahiro Ishihara, Karlo Knezevic, João Macedo, Guang Peng, Anil Saini * 2020 Recent graduates : Raneem Qaddoura, Marialaura Previti, Mohammed Baraq Mushtaq * 2021 : Aidan Murphy, Ailin Chen, Allison Lahnala, Amirhossein Rajabi, Andreea Avramescu, Anja Jankovic, Christian Cintrano, Gonzalo Carazo-Barbero, Jamie Caldwell, Michal Piňos, Miguel Ángel Domínguez Ríos, Nádia Carvalho, Quentin Renau, Raphaël Cosson, Ricardo Henrique Remes de Lima, Ruba Abu Khurma, Stefano Sarti, Tiago Sousa, Zimeng Lyu, Zongyu Yin * 2021 Recent graduates : Alejandro Romero, Erlend Gjesteland Ekern, Francisco Braga

References

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External links

EVONET - THE NETWORK OF EXCELLENCE IN EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTING
EuroGP
the annual conference on Genetic Programming
EvoApplications
the International Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary Computation
EvoCOP
the European Conference on Evolutionary Computation in Combinatorial Optimisation
EvoMUSART
the International Conference on Computational Intelligence in Music, Sound, Art and Design.
SPECIES

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