[Seminar] Software Engineering Abstractions for Metaheuristics: a 20 years journey

Tra le attività organizzate dal gruppo di ricerca Complex Intelligent  Systems (CIS) del Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica, Venerdì 13 Gennaio alle ore 15:30 il prof. Luca Di Gaspero dell’Università degli Studi di Udine, terrà un seminario online dal titolo “Software Engineering Abstractions for Metaheuristics: a 20 years journey”.

Il seminario, della durata di 1h, si svolgerà tramite piattaforma  Teams ed è aperto a tutti gli interessati utilizzando il link sotto riportato.

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SPEAKER: Prof. Luca Di Gaspero, Associate Professor in Information 
Technology at the University of Udine, Italy

TITLE: Software Engineering Abstractions for Metaheuristics: a 20 
years journey

ABSTRACT:
Differently from other search and optimization paradigms, e.g., branch 
and bound, the supposed simplicity of metaheuristic methods and the 
limited availability of modeling tools induces the researchers to 
build their metaheuristics applications from scratch. On the other 
hand, the evolution of the techniques (local search, genetic and 
evolutionary algorithms, hybrids, etc.) seems to make the development 
of general tools quite impractical.

In 2003, together with Andrea Schaerf, we decided to subvert these 
stereotypes and we proposed EasyLocal++, an open-source 
object-oriented framework for local search metaheuristics, with the 
aim of engineering the development of solvers both at a research and 
at an industry-ready level. After 20 years the system has evolved 
(according to the new capabilities of the underlying programming 
language, i.e., C++) and extended (incorporating further modules to be 
industry-level) but most of the design choices (or in other words the 
software abstractions) are still valid nowadays.

In this presentation I will briefly survey the tools for metaheuristic 
development and I will present the abstractions that are incorporated 
into EasyLocal++, exhibiting some software engineering principles 
behind them. I will show how useful is to work with an abstract 
framework, also in terms of providing different access points to the 
solver.


LINK TEAMS:
https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3a1a680d7cca034a7885edad5522ce36e7%40thread.tacv2/1673259298884?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22baeefbc8-3c8b-4382-9126-e86bfef46ce6%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22bc28bab1-e0fb-4b00-af9d-1dbe79cf84e5%22%7d