Theory, empirics, and practice are often considered in isolation in our research community. However, recent work has demonstrated that collaboration across the three different types of research can be highly mutually beneficial. For example, empirical results serve as proof of concept for real-world applications and inspiration for new theoretical considerations. Theoretical insights can provide necessary insights into problem properties and algorithm behaviour and hence improve the applicability of heuristics in empirics and practice. Real-world problems provide inspiration for new theoretical and empirical studies and inform the development of important benchmarks. This special session aims at bridging the gap between theory, empirics, and practice in evolutionary computation by fostering communication, discussion and exchange across different parts of the community.

Topics of Interest

We welcome contributions from all areas of evolutionary computation and other randomised search heuristic, irrespective of the nature of the considered problems or search spaces. 

Particular areas of interest include but are not limited to:

• Carefully designed empirical studies
• Theoretical work highlighting the insights generated by the analyses performed
• Examples of successful knowledge transfer of theoretical analysis or empirical studies into a practical scenario
• Theory that is inspired by phenomena observed in practice or empirical analyses
• Efficient means to bridge the gap between theory, empirics, and practice such as benchmarking.

Organisers

• Thomas Bartz-Beielstein
  TH Köln, Germany
  thomas.bartz-beielstein(at)th-koeln.de
• Carola Doerr
  CNRS and Sorbonne Université, France
  Carola.Doerr(at)lip6.fr
• Christine Zarges
  Aberystwyth University, UK
  chz8(at)aber.ac.uk

Submit Paper

Paper submissions must be original and not published elsewhere. The submissions will be peer reviewed by members of the program committee. The reviewing process will be double-blind, please omit information about the authors in the submitted paper. Submit your manuscript in Springer LNCS format.

If you want to link external resources (source code, images, videos, etc.) be sure that the link or the resources do not reveal the identity of the authors. For example, avoid links to an institutional cloud service where the URL can reveal the institution or the name of the author. You can consider to submit your material using the “supplementary material” field in the Easychair submission form (10MB limit). You can also consider to use third-party cloud services, like Google Drive, One Drive, Open Science Framework, Figshare or Zenodo, which can provide anonymous links hiding the identity of the user.

Springer encourages authors to include their ORCIDs in their papers.

You may also consider the inclusion of embedded videos.

Page limit: 14 + unlimited references pages (for EvoCOP check the page limit details)

Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=evo2025

Student Statement. If the work is student work a statement signed by all the authors should be uploaded acknowledging that is so. Available here.

Authors of accepted papers will have to improve their paper on the basis of the reviewers’ comments and will be asked to send a camera ready version of their manuscripts. At least one author of each accepted work has to register for the conference, attend the conference and present the work.