The IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation is a research conference for practitioners in the field of evolutionary computation, interpreted broadly, organised by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. It has been held annually since 1994, although its current name was only adopted in 1999. In alternate years it combines with the other main conferences organised by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society in the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (IEEE WCCI).

Origin and naming

IEEE CEC began in 1994 as the IEEE Conference on Evolutionary Computation. In 1995 the conference name changed to the IEEE International Conference on Evolutionary Computation (IEEE ICEC) and it was held with this title through 1998. In 1999, the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, in combination with the Evolutionary Programming SocietyUnable to find a suitable reference to the Evolutionary Programming Society. If you have one please replace this reference with one more suitable. which operated the annual Evolutionary Programming ConferenceUnable to find a suitable reference to the Evolutionary Programming Conference. If you know of one please replace this reference with something more suitable. (1992–1999) and the IETThe Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) was formed in 2006 as a result of the merger of the IEE and the IIE. which operated the International Conference on Genetic Algorithms in Engineering Systems, Innovations and Applications (1995–1999) through the IEE, combined to co-sponsor the newly named IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, and this title continues to the present.

In even-numbered years it is part of the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (IEEE WCCI), which combines all the main conferences of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society: IEEE CEC, IJCNN (the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks) and FUZZ-IEEE (the IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems).

History

Since the first conference in 1994 the conference has been held annually at different international locations reflecting global involvement in the field of evolutionary computation.

+ IEEE CEC conferences over timeYearLocationWebsiteIf "No" is declared for a conference website it is inaccessible at the time of updating the table (in 2025). An archived Call for Papers is not considered the same as an active website.ProceedingsIf "No" is declared for IEEE CEC conference proceedings they are inaccessible at the time of updating the table (in 2025).Where IEEE CEC conference proceedings are published in multiple volumes according to the IEEE Xplore digital library, a link is made to one volume and the others can be accessed from there.1994Orlando, United States No Yes1995Perth, Australia No Yes1996Nagoya, Japan No Yes1997Indianapolis, United States No Yes1998Anchorage, United States No Yes1999Washington, D.C., United States Yes Yes2000San Diego, United States No Yes2001Seoul, South Korea No Yes2002Honolulu, United States No Yes2003Canberra, Australia No Yes2004Portland, United States No Yes2005Edinburgh, United Kingdom Yes Yes2006Vancouver, Canada Yes Yes2007Singapore Yes Yes2008Hong Kong, China Yes Yes2009Trondheim, Norway No Yes2010Barcelona, Spain No Yes2011New Orleans, United States Yes Yes2012Brisbane, Australia No Yes2013Cancún, Mexico No Yes2014Beijing, China Yes Yes2015Sendai, Japan No Yes2016Vancouver, Canada Yes Yes2017San Sebastián, Spain No Yes2018Rio de Janeiro, Brazil No Yes2019Wellington, New Zealand No Yes2020Glasgow, United KingdomThe IEEE CEC conference was virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic. No Yes2021Kraków, Poland No Yes2022Padua, Italy No Yes2023Chicago, United States Yes Yes2024Yokohama, Japan Yes Yes2025Hangzhou, China No Yes2026Maastricht, Netherlands Yes Forthcoming

Main conference

Themes The main part of each IEEE CEC conference is a series of sessions covering most fields of evolutionary computation, its applications and related areas with similar inspiration from biology. Because there are a large number of sessions much of the conference is organised in parallel: the one page diagram of the program of IEEE CEC 2023 makes this clear.

To emphasize this, the table below lists sessions from the program of IEEE CEC 2011 together with comments. Although 2011 is now some time ago (this article was updated in 2025) that year was selected because the detailed program was available as a separate document that can be downloaded and read separately from the conference proceedings.

+Sessions at IEEE CEC 2011Sessions at IEEE CEC 2011 are ordered approximately in the order they appear in the Detailed Program. Some are multiple sessions and are thus just shown the first time they appear. Some are described as Special Sessions in the Detailed Program but are not distinguished here for simplicity.TopicTitles of some sessions have been simplified from those in the detailed program in order to fit in the table. Read the detailed program for full details.Comments The artificial bee colony algorithm Applications inspired by the behaviour of bees Real world applications Multiple sessions about applications of evolutionary algorithms and related techniques not covered by other sessions Evolutionary robotics The application of evolutionary algorithms to control of robots Evolutionary strategies The evolution strategy is one of the original paradigms of evolutionary computation Evolutionary computation applied to finance Fintech is an important field to which evolutionary computation can contribute Hardware aspects of biologically inspired systems Evolutionary computation usually focuses on software. What about the hardware needed to run it? Computer vision Evolutionary computation applied to image analysis Applications in bioinformatics and computational biology Much of computational biology is concerned with the software tools needed for bioinformatics, so these application domains overlap Evolutionary computation applied to large-scale problems using multi-core architectures. In 2025 laptops have multi-core CPUs: in 2011 this referred to GPUs Clustering and data mining Machine learning techniques applied to data science can also use evolutionary computation Evolvable hardware and software Using, for example, field programmable gate arrays Fitness landscapes and learning evolutionary algorithms depend on an idea of fitness and this affects their application Computational intelligence and games Applications both in game theory and in specific games Nature-inspired constrained optimization Applications of evolutionary computation to this type of optimization Approaches to Large-scale optimization problems How can evolutionary computation be useful? The ant colony algorithm applied to complex problems This algorithm is inspired by the behaviour of ants in nature Art and music How can evolutionary computation be applied in these creative disciplines?See also EvoStar which incorporates a conference specifically on these topics. Genetic programming One of the classic algorithms of evolutionary computation Memetic algorithms Another direction of research in evolutionary algorithms Cultural algorithms and artificial immune systems Applications inspired by complex systems in cultural interactions and in the biological immune system Evolution of developmental systems Algorithms inspired by developmental biology Metaheuristics for global continuous optimization Applications of evolutionary algorithms as heuristics to this branch of optimization Representation and operators How to represent a real-world problem in an evolutionary algorithm in order to get useful solutions Learning classifier systems Combining an evolutionary algorithm with some other machine learning component Multi-objective optimization Evolutionary computation applied to another area of optimization Learning in autonomous agents Application of evolutionary computation in this field of artificial intelligence Statistical techniques in evolutionary algorithms The use of statistical inference can affect applications of evolutionary algorithms Particle swarm optimization More biologically inspired algorithms often associated with evolutionary computation Medical image analysis Applying evolutionary computation to this specific domain Evolutionary programming Another of the early algorithms that formed evolutionary computation Differential evolution Another type of evolutionary algorithm Evolved neural networks Neural networks are a major distinct field of activity in computer science, but evolutionary computation can introduce change Theory of evolutionary computation What are the mathematical bases of evolutionary algorithms? Engineering applications of evolutionary computation A session focusing on another application domain Complex networks Complex networks may be addressed through applications of evolutionary computation Multi-agent systemsThe session entitled Evolutionary games and multi-agent systems is described as Multi-agent systems in the table because the paper abstracts suggest some ambiguity with the concept of evolutionary games in game theory. Applications of evolutionary computation to the understanding of multi-agent systems Network optimization Real-world network design generates optimization problems that may be addressed through application of evolutionary computation Coevolution in evolutionary computation Drawing inspiration from biological coevolution can lead to innovation in evolutionary computation Artificial life Drawing inspiration from wider areas of biology, in addition to evolutionary biology

Plenary speakers Researchers recognized in the field are invited to give plenary speeches at each IEEE CEC conference. At IEEE CEC 2023 in Chicago the plenary speakers were Stephanie Forrest, Markus Olhofer and Kalyanmoy Deb. Stephanie Forrest was the recipient of the Pioneer Award at that conference.

Awards The Pioneer Award mentioned in plenary speakers above is awarded at IEEE CEC conferences to an individual who is recognized in having made a substantial contribution to the field of evolutionary computation.

In addition, awards are presented to the winners of the competitions, and to presenters of papers selected as the Best Papers.

Additional sessions

Tutorials Because the main sessions of each IEEE CEC conference covers so many different fields, tutorials are held in addition to the main conference that allow participants to learn about areas that they may not have been familiar with before. Examples of tutorials at IEEE CEC 2023 are given in the table below.

+Tutorials at IEEE CEC 2023Names of presenters of tutorials are not given. They can be identified from the web page listing tutorials cited above.Tutorial titleComments Genetic programming and machine learning for scheduling Scheduling is an important application domain in many areas Transfer learning in evolutionary spaces Transfer learning, a machine learning technique that originated separately from evolutionary computation can follow new directions in the latter field Benchmarking and analyzing iterative optimization heuristics withThe original title of this tutorial is given: an article [a/an/the] is missing. IOH profiler Benchmarking is as important in evolutionary computation as it is in other areas of computer science, since many similar algorithms can be developed Evolutionary computation success in medical diagnosis A tutorial on a specific application domain.

Workshops