Special Session on "*Synergy between optimization and simulation*" in track "*Metaheuristics and Machine Learning"* In conjunction with *Metaheuristics International Conference (MIC 2017)*

Barcelona, Spain, July 4th-7th 2017

Submission deadline: February 15, 2017

*SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES*

Most real-world problems are complex and stochastic and, thus, hard to approach. Such problems originate from a wide range of areas including manufacturing and production, logistics and supply chain management, healthcare, and many more. Simulation and optimization have traditionally been considered separately as alternative approaches to deal with such problems. The recent advances in computational power have promoted the proliferation of hybrid techniques that combine both approaches.

This special session seeks to provide an opportunity for researchers to present their original contributions on the joint use of advanced single- and multi-objective metaheuristics and simulation based for instance on surrogate models, their applications in different fields including the above ones, their integration in simulation software, their parallelization on various hardware platforms (multi-core processors, coprocessors such as GPU and Xeon Phi, clusters, etc.), and any related issues.

*INSTRUCTIONS FOR PAPER SUBMISSIONS*

Authors are encouraged to submit unpublished and outstanding original contributions.Submissions are only electronic, in PDF format, using the EasyChair system. They are welcome in any of the three categories S1-S3:

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S1) Original research contributions for publication in the conference proceedings of a maximum of 10 pages.

S2) Extended abstracts of work-in-progress of a maximum of 3 pages.

S3) High-quality manuscripts that have recently, within the last six months, been submitted or accepted for journal publication.

All submitted papers will be peer reviewed. They must follow the submission guidelines below. Accepted papers will be published in the online proceedings that will be available at the conference.

Accepted contributions of categories S1 and S2 will be published in the MIC 2017 conference proceedings. Accepted contributions of category S3 will be orally presented at the conference, but not be included into the conference proceedings.

*Submission Guidelines*

Authors are invited to submit papers to both the general and the special sessions. During submission, authors will be required to specify which track they are submitting their paper to. Submitted papers (both regular and special sessions) must be formatted according to MIC/MAEB 2017 guidelines. Full instructions including formatting guidelines and electronic templates (both LaTeX and Microsoft Word) are available below. Submission is only electronic, in PDF format, using the *EasyChair system link*:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mic2017

At least one author of each accepted paper and poster is required to attend the conference to present the work. Authors will be required to agree to this requirement at the time of submission. Only one paper or poster per registered author will be accepted (one author cannot present a paper and a poster at the conference, only one type of presentation).

All papers are due electronically by the deadline reported below. Submissions that do not meet the length or formatting requirements will not be accepted for review. No email or fax submissions will be accepted. Notification of receipt of an electronically submitted paper will be emailed to the designated contact author soon after receipt. If there are problems with the electronic submission, the program chairs will contact the designated author by email.

*Final version submission*

The final version in PDF format should be upload via EASY CHAIR. There is no copyright.

*Electronic templates*

The electronic templates for formatting the papers are available in the following formats. Please follow the formatting guidelines for correctly typesetting the paper.

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·File mic2017Latex.zip http://mic2017.upf.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/mic2017Latex.zip contains all the necessary files to generate the pdf manuscript with Latex. Specifically,

oClass file (mic2017.cls): This file requires also additional files (graphicx.sty, geometry.sty, times.sty, babel.sty, fancyhdr.sty), which are usually included in the most common LaTeX distributions.

oExample LaTeX template (example.tex).

oExample BibTeX file (example.bib).

oExample graphics (mic.eps / mic.pdf).

·File mic2017Word.zip http://mic2017.upf.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/mic2017Word.zip contains all the necessary files to generate the pdf manuscript with Microsoft Word. Specifically:

oTemplate (mic2015.dot).

oDocument (mic2015.doc)

oExample graphics (mic.eps / mic.pdf)

*Poster Session and Ph.D Colloquium***

A Poster Session will be held during the conference where posters will exhibited for informal browsing with opportunities for individual discussion with their authors.

The Ph.D. Colloquium addresses Ph.D. students that are within one year of their graduation (planning to graduate around July 2018). Students close to graduation will be given an opportunity to showcase their work during a short presentation session in the Colloquium, and in this way obtain valuable feedback and introduce yourself to a network that can be of important relevance in your career.

The submission for the *Poster Session and the Ph.D Colloquium *should be of format S2) Extended abstracts of work-in-progress of a maximum of 3 pages.

*IMPORTANT DATES*

*Submission deadline*: February 15, 2017 *Notification of acceptance*: February 27, 2017 *Camera-ready papers*: March 6, 2017 *Early registration due date*: March 31, 2017 *Conference*: July 4-7 2017

*SPECIAL SESSION ORGANIZERS*

*Nouredine Melab* Université Lille 1/INRIA Lille - Nord Europe/CNRS CRIStAL Lille, France Email: nouredine.melab@univ-lille1.fr mailto:nouredine.melab@univ-lille1.fr

* El-Ghazali Talbi *Université Lille 1/INRIA Lille - Nord Europe/CNRS CRIStAL Lille, France Email: el-ghazali.talbi@univ-lille1.fr mailto:%C2%A0el-ghazali.talbi@univ-lille1.fr

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*Peter Korošec*

Jožef Stefan Institute http://www.ijs.si/

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Email: peter.korosec@ijs.si mailto:peter.korosec@ijs.si

*Boris Naujoks*

TH Köln, University of Applied Sciences,

Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering Science

Gummersbach, Germany

Email: boris.naujoks@th-koeln.de