Preface

These proceedings contain the papers presented at the 8th Annual Genetic and Evolutionary Computation COnference (GECCO-2006), held in Seattle, Washington, USA., July 8-12, 2006.

In our second year sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Evolutionary Computation (SIGEVO), we've seen a further evolution of the field toward practical importance. Although the main genetic algorithm track remains the largest in the number of submitted papers, the real world applications track is starting to close the gap rapidly. As an ACM publication, the GECCO-2006 proceedings are available online in the ACM Digital Library. This guarantees a broader dissemination of Darwinian and other nature-inspired computation methods, and will likely increase the relevance of the field even further. 

A total of 446 papers were submitted to 15 separate tracks, with 205 (46%) accepted as full, eight-page papers for publication and oral presentation. Double-blind reviews were conducted by over 400 reviewers. On average, each paper was evaluated by four reviewers. In addition, 143 papers were accepted as posters with two-page abstracts included in the proceedings.

With 10 workshops, 32 tutorials, sessions in Evolutionary Computation in Practice, late-breaking papers, awards in human-competitive results, GECCO-2006 has lived up to its motto of one conference, many mini-conferences. Also this year's GECCO thrives on diversity.

The conference is filled with life through the work of the 2006 track chairs and program committees. The track chairs deserve special thanks for their efforts in finding reviewers, performing the paper assignments, and finally making the difficult acceptance decisions. Their work relied, however, on the volunteer work of the program committee members. Everyone’s input and patience as the conference transitioned to new, customized review software was greatly appreciated. This year's chairs were:

The scientific quality of the conference as well as that of the proceedings is ensured by principles laid down in the GECCO by-laws of SIGEVO:

(i) The GECCO conference shall be a broad-based conference encompassing the whole field of genetic and evolutionary computation.

(ii) Papers will be published and presented as part of the main conference proceedings only after being peer reviewed. No invited papers shall be published (except for those of up to three invited plenary speakers).

(iii) The peer review process shall be conducted consistent with the principle of division of powers performed by a multiplicity of independent program committees, each with expertise in the area of the paper being reviewed.

(iv) The determination of the policy for the peer review process for each of the conference’s independent program committees and the reviewing of papers for each program committee shall be performed by persons who occupy their positions by virtue of meeting objective and explicitly stated qualifications based on their previous scientific research activity or applications activity.

(v) Emerging areas within the field of genetic and evolutionary computation shall be actively encouraged and incorporated in the activities of the conference by providing a semi-automatic method for their inclusion into the activities of the conference (with some procedural flexibility being extended to such emerging new areas).

(vi) The percentage of submitted papers that are accepted as regular papers (i.e., papers other than poster papers) shall not exceed 50%.

Finally, our special thanks are due to the numerous researchers and practitioners who submitted their best work to GECCO-2006, presented a tutorial, organized a workshop, or volunteered their time in any other way.