Nature-Inspired Systems for Parallel, Asynchronous and Decentralised
Environments
NISPADE 2006

April 3rd-4th 2006, Bristol, UK

www.cs.york.ac.uk/aig/nispade2006

A 2-day symposium to be held as part of: AISB'06: Adaptation in
Artificial and Biological Systems

Nature-inspired algorithms such as genetic algorithms, particle swarm
optimisation and ant colony algorithms are the state-of-the-art
solution technique for some problems. Furthermore, their population-
based stochastic search approach promises desirable algorithm
features such as anytime decentralised solution and robustness to
problem change.
However, the efficient pursuit of more accurate solutions leads
researchers to appeal to centralised, highly tuned and sequential
implementations that are only loosely related to their successful
natural counterparts. This renders them brittle in the face of the
dynamism of changing problem specifications and operating conditions
and limits their usefulness to industry's direction of increasing
distribution, decentralisation and adaptability.

Emerging computing environments such as autonomic computing,
ubiquitous computing, Peer-to-Peer systems, the Grid and the Semantic
Web demand the interaction of large numbers of decentralised,
parallel, asynchronous, and distributed software entities in a
standardised fashion.

If nature-inspired algorithms are to make an impact on these emerging
computing environments, disciplined scientific and engineering
investigations must be undertaken into the successful transfer of
these algorithms, techniques and infrastructures into such
environments.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

METHODOLOGIES:
- Searching the vast parameter spaces of parallel, asynchronous and
decentralised nature-inspired systems.
- Empirical performance evaluation and benchmarking procedures for
these systems.
- Design and programming abstractions to manage the complexity of
these systems
- Software engineering techniques, e.g., design patterns, component
frameworks and software architectures

MIDDLEWARE FOR IMPLEMENTING ALGORITHMS IN MASs:
- Supporting nature-inspired algorithms in a decentralised,
asynchronous and parallel context (e.g. pheromone infrastructures).
- Integrating implementations within existing middleware technologies.
- Ontologies and protocols for nature-inspired system functionality
(e.g. pheromone deposition, aggregation and dispersion).

APPLICATIONS:
- Applications of nature-inspired techniques in novel areas, such as
mobile, pervasive and grid computing
- Scalability and performance optimisation of applications
- Tool support for nature-inspired techniques

EXPERIENCES AND RESULTS
- New issues in the emerging computing environments context (e.g.
asynchronicity, self-organisation, hyperactivity, agent redundancy,
messaging costs).
- Measures of the above.
- Efficiency, robustness, population diversity, adaptiveness and other
qualities.



SUBMISSIONS AND PUBLICATION
Papers should be 5 pages in length, formatted according to Springer
LNCS. The final proceedings will contain both short papers (5 pages)
and long papers (up to 10 pages). See website
(www.cs.york.ac.uk/aig/nispade2006) for further details.


PROGRAMME COMMITTEE:
- Sven Brueckner, Altarum Institute, USA.
- David Cornforth, Charles Stuart University, Australia.
- Giovanna Di Marzo Serugendo, University of Geneva, Switzerland.
- Tom Holvoet, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.
- Dimitar Kazakov, The University of York, UK
- Graham Kirby, University of St Andrews, Scotland
- Daniel Kudenko, The University of York, UK
- Michael Madden, National University of Ireland, Galway
- Ana Sendova-Franks, The University of the West of England, UK.
- Thomas Stützle, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany
- Katja Verbeeck, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium.
- Danny Weyns, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

IMPORTANT DATES
- Paper submission: January 13th
- Notification of acceptance: February 3rd
- Camera ready copies: February 20th



CONTACT:
Enda Ridge, Department of Computer Science, The University of York,
YO10 5DD, UK.
Email: ERidge@...
Tel: +44 (0)1904 43 4731
Fax: +44 (0)1904 43 2767

Edward Curry, Department of Information Technology, National
University
of Ireland, Galway, Ireland.
Email: EdCurry@...