Gabriela Ochoa

Senior Research Fellow

Research Interests

I am interested in heuristic search methods, evolutionary and machine learning techniques both in their foundations and applications to challenging real-world problems.

Research Themes

Evolutionary Computation, Self-* Search, Automated Heuristic Design, Fitness Landscape Analysis, Hyper-heuristics, Meta-heuristics, Machine Learning, Scheduling, Combinatorial Optimisation, Medical Optimisation.

News

Tutorial Chair for GECCO 2012 (Call for Tutorial Propoals)
LION 6 Special Session: Cross-domain Heuristic Search (LION-CHESC) Paris, Jan 16-20, 2012
GECCO 2011 New Frontiers Track: Self-* Search
The first Cross-domain Heuristic Search Challenge
Evolutionary Computation Journal (ECJ), MIT Press, Special Issue: Automated Design and Assessment of Heuristic Search Methods.

Recent Conference Papers and Reports

E. Burke, T. Curtois, M. Hyde, G. Ochoa, J. A. Vazquez-Rodriguez (2011) HyFlex: A Benchmark Framework for Cross-domain Heuristic Search, ArXiv e-prints, arXiv:1107.5462v1, July 2011. [bib entry].
S. Verel, F. Daolio, G. Ochoa, M. Tomassini. Local Optima Networks with Escape Edges. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Artificial Evolution (EA-2011), (to appear).
D. Whitley, G. Ochoa. Partial Neighborhoods of the Traveling Salesman Problem. Proceedings of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2011), ACM, pp. 529-536.
E. K. Burke, M. Gendreau, G. Ochoa, J. Walker. Adaptive Iterated Local Search for Cross-domain Optimisation. Proceedings of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2011), ACM, pp. 1987-1994.

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Journal Papers

J. Swan, G. Ochoa, G. Kendall, M. Edjvet (2011) Fitness Landscapes and the Andrew-Curtis Conjecture, International Journal of Algebra and Computation. (to appear)
F. Daolio, M. Tomassini, S. Verel, G. Ochoa (2011) Communities of Minima in Local Optima Networks of Combinatorial Spaces, Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Appli-
cations, Vol. 390, pp. 1684-1694.: slides.
J. A. Vazquez-Rodriguez, G. Ochoa (2011) On the Automatic Discovery of Variants of the NEH Procedure for Flowshop Scheduling Using Genetic Programming, Journal of the Operations Research Society, 62(2), pp. 381-396, link to Journal, doi:10.1057/jors.2010.132.
M. Villasana, G. Ochoa, S. Aguilar (2010) Modeling and Optimization of Combined Cytostatic and Cytotoxic Chemotherapy, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, vol. 50, pp. 163 - 173, DOI: 10.1016/j.artmed.2010.05.009.
S. Verel, G. Ochoa, M. Tomassini (2010) Local Optima Networks of NK Landscapes with Neutrality, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, link to IEEXplore, doi: 10.1109/TEVC.2010.2046175
E. Özcan, M. Mısır, G. Ochoa, E. K. Burke (2010). A Reinforcement Learning - Great-Deluge Hyper-heuristic for Examination Timetabling, International Journal of Applied Metaheuristic Computing (IJAMC), 1:1, pp 39-59.
M. Tomassini, S. Verel, G. Ochoa (2008) Complex-network analysis of combinatorial spaces: The NK landscape case, Physical Review E, Vol.78, No.6:, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.78.066114.
G. Ochoa, M. Villasana, and E. K. Burke (2007) An Evolutionary Approach to Cancer Chemotherapy Scheduling, Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines Journal, 8:4, Springer, pp 301-318 (DOI: 10.1007/s10710-007-9041-y).
G. Ochoa (2006) Error Thresholds in Genetic Algorithms. Evolutionary Computation Journal, 14:2, pp 157-182, MIT Press.
M. Villasana, G. Ochoa (2004) Heuristic Design of Cancer Quemotherapies. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, 8:6, pp 513-521.
G. Ochoa, K. Jaffe (1999) On Sex, Parasites, and the Red Queen. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 199, pp 1-9.

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Book Chapters

G. Ochoa (2011) [in Spanish] Introduccion a la Computacion Evolutiva y la Morfogenesis Artificial, Evolution, Bicentenario del Nacimiento de Charles Darwin, Editorial Equinoccio.
E. K. Burke, M. Hyde, G. Kendall, G. Ochoa, E. Ozcan, and J. Woodward (2010). A Classification of Hyper-heuristics Approaches, Handbook of Metaheuristics, International Series in Operations Research & Management Science, M. Gendreau and J-Y Potvin (Eds.), Springer, pp.449-468.
E. K. Burke, M. R. Hyde, G. Kendall, G. Ochoa, E. Ozcan and J. R. Woodward (2009) Exploring Hyper-heuristic Methodologies with Genetic Programming, Computational Intelligence: Collaboration, Fusion and Emergence, In C. Mumford and L. Jain (eds.), Intelligent Systems Reference Library, Springer, pp. 177-201.
G. Ochoa, I. Harvey (1999) Recombination and Error Thresholds in Finite Populations. Foundations of Genetic Algorithms 5 (FOGA 5), Edited by Wolfgang Banzhaf and Colin Reeves, pp 245-264, Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, CA.

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Selected Proceedings

E. K. Burke, T. Curtois, M. Hyde, G. Kendall, G. Ochoa, S. Petrovic, J. A. Vazquez-
Rodriguez and M. Gendreau (2010) Iterated Local Search vs. Hyper-heuristics: Towards General-purpose Search Algorithms, IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC 2010), IEEE PRess, pp. 3073-3080.
G. Ochoa, R. Qu, E. K. Burke (2009) Analyzing the Landscape of a Graph Based Hyper-heuristic for Timetabling Problems. Proceedings of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-09), ACM, pp. 341-348.
G. Ochoa, M. Tomassini, S. Verel, C. Darabos (2008) A Study of NK Landscapes' Basins and Local Optima Networks. Proceedings of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-08), ACM, pp. 555-562. Note: best paper nomination.
G. Ochoa, K. Jaffe (2006) Assortative Mating Drastically Alters the Magnitude of Error Thresholds. Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN IX), Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4193, pp 890-899, Springer-Verlag, Berlin. Note: best paper award.
G. Escuela, G. Ochoa, N. Krasnogor. (2005) Evolving L-Systems to Capture Protein Structure Native Conformations. 8th European Conference on Genetic Programming (EuroGP 2005), Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3447, pp 73-83,Springer-Verlag, Berlin. Site. Note: best paper nomination.
G. Ochoa, I. Harvey, H. Buxton (1999) On Recombination and Optimal Mutation Rates. Proceedings of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-99), pp 488-495, Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, CA.
G. Ochoa (1998) On Genetic Algorithms and Lindenmayer Systems. Parallel Problem Solving From Nature (PPSN V), Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1498, pp 335-344, Springer-Verlag, Berlin.

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Last Update: 01 October 2011