Computer Science Research Talks

Title: Exploration and Exploitation in Evolutionary Algorithms - Recent Developments

Abstract:

It has been acknowledged for a long time that achieving a balance between exploration and exploitation in Evolutionary Algorithms is of primary importance. However, how to measure exploration and exploitation directly has been an open problem, and a common belief is that clear identification of exploration and exploitation is not possible. In this talk, our novel direct measure of exploration and exploitation is discussed, which is based on attraction basins — parts of a search space where each part has its own point called an attractor,  to which neighbouring points tend to evolve. Each search point can be associated with a particular attraction basin. If a newly generated search point belongs to the same attraction basin as its parent, then the search process is identified as exploitation; otherwise, as exploration. In the last part, I will show how newly developed exploration and exploitation measures can be used to analyse different evolutionary algorithms.

 

Date/Time: August 24, 2026 @ 3 pm - 3:50pm
Location: Science 2, Room 109

Speaker: Dr. Marjan Mernik
Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of Maribor, Slovenia
Dr. Mernik's Webpage
Dr. Mernik's Google Scholar Profile

Bio:

Marjan Mernik received the MSc and PhD degrees in Computer Science from the University of Maribor in 1994 and 1998, respectively. He is currently a professor at the University of Maribor, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. From 2007 to 2017, he was a visiting professor in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His research interests include programming languages, domain-specific (modelling) languages, grammar and semantic inference, and evolutionary computations. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Computer Languages, as well as an Associate Editor of the Applied Soft Computing Journal and Swarm and Evolutionary Computation Journal. He has been named a Highly Cited Researcher for 2017 and 2018, and a Stanford University and Elsevier Top 2% Scientist for 2020-2025. More information about his work is available at https://lpm.feri.um.si/en/members/mernik/.