Software Evolution and Evolutionary Computation

SYMPOSIUM  AIMS

This EPSRC symposium follows upon the growing awareness from academia, industry, and research communities of the importance of evolvability, tentatively defined as, the capacity to vary robustly and adaptively over time or generations in digital and natural systems. The symposium aims to encourage a dialogue between various workers in areas that might benefit from a possible common framework addressing software engineering as well as evolutionary computation concerns.

Darwinian evolution characterized by heritable variation and selection is not by itself sufficient to account for the capacity to vary and inherent phenotypic expressions of fitness. Rigidity of genotype-phenotype mappings, as often used in evolutionary computation, constrains the dynamics of evolution to a small space of possible biological or artificial systems. Open-ended evolution is not possible under such constraints. Evolution, by itself, cannot fully explain the advant of genetic systems, the flexible genotype-phenotype mappings, heritable fitness. This presents a challenge both to biologists seeking to understand the capacity of life to evolve and to computer scientists who seek to harness biological-like robustness and openness in the evolution of artificial systems.

Evolvability has been variously defined as the "genome's ability to produce adaptive variants when acted on by the genetic system" (Wagner & Altenberg, 1996), as the "capacity to generate heritable phenotypic variation" (Kirschner & Gerhart, 1998); and as characterized by `evolutionary watersheds' opening the "floodgates to future evolution", such as segmentation and body plans (Dawkins, 1987). On the other hand, unconstrained or an inappropriately constrained variability and change can lead to lack of stability, "cancer", nonheritability of fitness, lack of evolutionary power, and so on. Since at least the work of Parnas and Dijkstra in software engineering, related issues have been identified in the design of software systems (e.g. structural decompostion, information hiding, modularity, requirements change).

We solicit abstracts for poster or oral presentation (appox. 20-25 minute talk) reporting working in this exciting area. Talks should address an interdisciplinary audience, but may nevertheless at deal with issues at the cutting edge of research.

Send submissions in plain text (ASCII) format only to C.L.Nehaniv@herts.ac.uk. The submission should show author name(s), full addresses, submission title, and an abstract of not more than 500 words. Submissions should include a statement of the preferred mode of presentation: poster / oral.

TOPICS FOCUS ON EVOLVABILITY, and might relate to such aspects as (This is not an exhaustive list!):

• Software Requirements and Requirements Change
• Flexibility and Features of the Genotype-Phenotype Mapping / Relation
• Change in Context of a System
• Modularity & Compartmentation
• Evolutionary Metaphors in Software Engineering
• Evolutionary Models of Software Engineering
• Heritable Phenotypic Variability
• Variability (the Capacity to Vary -- as opposed to Variation)
• Self-Replicating & Self-Maintaining Systems
• Developmental Constraints, Canalization
• Evolution of Individuality
• Coherence and Identity of Systems
• Differentiated Multicellularity, Segmentation, Body Plans,
• Transitions in Units of Fitness
• Symbiogenesis
• Epigenetic Inheritance
• Modularity in Development
• Selection for Reluctance / Eagerness to Evolve
• Search Behavior in Biological Systems
• Genetic Control of Phenotypic Variablility
• Signal Transduction & Robustness in Evolvability
• Accomodation of Environmental Variation
• Evolution of Complexity
• Systems of Replication and Inheritance
• Co-evolution of Control, Anatomy, and Ontogeny
• Evolvability in Genetic & Non-Genetic Systems of Inheritance (e.g. ``Lamarckian'' (non-Weissmannian) Inheritance)
• Overcoming Brittleness in Evolutionary Computation
• Open-Ended Evolution
• Applications in Telecommunications, Software Maintenance & Software Engineering
• Selecting for Evolvabilty
• The Relation between Software Evolution, Evolutionary Software, Biological Evolutionary Systems

PROGRAM CHAIR

CO-ORGANIZERS

• Martin Loomes (University of Hertfordshire)
• Paul Marrow (British Telecom, UK)
• Paul Wernick (University of Hertfordshire, UK)

PARTICIPATION

There is no registration fee.

Authors may submit abstracts (max. 500 words) for oral presentation or posters. Attendance and participation by non-authors, students, researchers from industry and academia is also welcome (but may be restricted subject to space limitations).

SUBMISSION DETAILS

IMPORTANT DATES

31 December 2001: Symposium Abstract Submissions Due
15 January 2002: Notification to Authors
7-8 February 2002: Symposium

PUBLICATION PLANS

Abstracts of accepted and invited papers will be published as a technical report of the University of Hertfordshire, available in hardcopy and on-line. Some selected papers based on accepted and invited talks will invited for submission for an edited volume on the symposium topic, mostly likely to be published by Springer Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science Series, which should include work from other evolvability symposia in the same or companion volumes.

The Symposium will comprise as keynote talks, contributed talks, posters, and a panel discussions with participants from different research areas. A symposium dinner will be held on 7 February 2002.