Pietro S. Oliveto

Senior Lecturer
EPSRC Early Career Fellow

Department of Computer Science,
The University of Sheffield,
Regent Court,
Portobello
Sheffield S1 4DP, UK.

Phone: +44 114 222 1812
Email: P.Oliveto@sheffield.ac.uk

(Last update: July 2020)

Current Occupation

I am a Senior Lecturer and an EPSRC Early Career Fellow at The University of Sheffield in the Department of Computer Science.

My main research interests are in bio-inspired computation, randomised search heuristics and randomised algorithms in general, with strong emphasis on runtime analysis and computational complexity.

Team Members

Rigorous Research

Algorithms group

- Dogan Corus (Research Associate).
- Andrei Lissovoi (Research Associate).
- Donya Yazdani (Research Assistant).
- George Hall (PhD Student).

Former PhD Students

- Donya Yazdani (Completed in July 2020) - PhD Thesis: Artificial Immune Systems for Combinatorial Optimisation: A Theoretical Investigation.
- John Alasdair Warwicker (Completed in May 2019) On the Runtime Analysis of Selection Hyper-heuristics for Pseudo-Boolean Optimisation (Thesis PDF).

Former Team Members

- John Alasdair Warwicker (Research Associate at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology).
- Andrea Mambrini (Industry).

Current Activities (2019-2020)

- I am Program co-Chair together with Michael Hellwig of the 16th ACM/SIGEVO Workshop on Foundations of Genetic Algorithms (FOGA XVI), taking place in FH Vorarlberg, Dornbirn, Austria from the 6th to the 8th of September 2021.
- I am Publications co-Chair together with Jan Karwowski of the 2021 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC 2021), taking place in Krakow, Poland from the 28th of June to the 1st of July 2021.
- I am organising the first ever IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) Student and Early Career Mentoring Programme at the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI 2020), together with Christian Wagner (for FUZZ-IEEE) and Manuel Roveri (for IJCNN) taking place in Glasgow, UK from the 19th to the 24th of July 2020. For more information: WCCI 2020 Mentoring Programme.
- I am co-Chair (together with Chao Qian, Leonardo Franco and Manuel Ojeda-Aciego) of the 2020 Symposium on Foundations of Computational Intelligence (IEEE FOCI 2020) as part of the 2020 Sysmposium Series on Computational Intelligence (IEEE SSCI 2020) held on December 1-4, 2020, Canberra, Australia (Now a virtual event).
- I have completed my term (2018-2019) as Chair of the IEEE CIS Technical Committee on Evolutionary Computation (ECTC). I am now serving the committee as Vice-Chair (Chair: Juergen Branke).

- I am member of the IEEE CIS Intelligent System Applications Technical Committee .
- I am a co-Organiser of the 2020 workshops on "Good Benchmarking Practices for Evolutionary Computation" at GECCO 2020 and at PPSN 2020 For more information on benchmarking activities visit the Benchmarking Network website.
- I am Tutorial Speaker at GECCO 2020 with Per Kristian Lehre, for a tutorial lecture entitled 'Runtime Analysis of Population-based Evolutionary Algorithms'. The tutorial introduces the mathematical techniques used in the analyses of realistic (not simplified) evolutionary and genetic algorithms.
- I was Training School Instructor teaching "Theory of Bio-Inspired Computing'' at the 2019 ImAppNIO Cost Action Training School on Nature-Inspired Search and Optimisation Heuristics ,which took place in Coimbra, Portugal from the 25th to the 29th of November 2019.
- I was honoured to be asked to provide an Invited Talk entitled "What's Hot in EA-Theory - Part II'' at the 2019 at the Dagstuhl Seminar on Theory of Randomized Optimisation Heuristics , Schloss Dagstuhl, Germany on October 22nd (Part I was given on October 21st by Carsten Witt).
- I was Keynote Speaker at the 11th International Joint Conference on Computional Intelligence (IJCCI 2019) on September 18th 2019 in Vienna, Austria. My seminar was entitled "How Theoretical Analyses Can Impact Practical Applications of Evolutionary Computation''.
- I was Keynote Speaker at the 25th International Conference on Soft Computing (MENDEL 2019) on Wednesday 10th July 2019 in Brno, Czech Republic. My seminar was entitled "How Theoretical Analyses Can Impact Practical Applications of Evolutionary Computation''.
- I gave an Invited Talk entitled "Sexual Reproduction Can Speed Up Optimisation'' at the Optimisation and Logistics Group's Seminar Series of the University of Adelaide, Australia, June 19th 2019.
- I gave an Invited Talk entitled "A Gentle Introduction to the Time Complexity Analysis of Evolutionary Algorithms'' at the Optimisation and Logistics Group's Seminar Series of the University of Adelaide, Australia, June 20th 2019.
- I gave an Invited Talk entitled "Sexual Reproduction Can Speed Up Optimisation'' at the Algorithms and Complexity Theory Seminar Series of the University of Oxford, on Thursday 28th February 2019.
- I have completed my term (2012-2017) as Founding Chair of the IEEE CIS Task Force on Theoretical Foundations of Bio-inspired Computation The new Chair is Chao Qian.
- I have completed my terms as member of the IEEE CIS Nominations Committee (2019) and of the IEEE CIS Technical Activities Committee (2018-2019).
- I have been grant proposal Peer reviewer for the U.S. Department of Energy, Advanced Scientific Computing Research program (ASCR) regarding the Fair Data and Models for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning funding call LAB 20-2306 .
- I am a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College and of the Carnegie Trust Research Assessors for the Universities of Scotland.

Editorial Work

- P.S. Oliveto, A. Auger, F. Chicano, C. M. Fonseca
- Special Issue on Theoretical Foundations of Evolutionary Computation - Guest Editorial
- IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation.
- Scheduled for December 2020, IEEE Press.
- P.S. Oliveto, A. Sutton
- Special Issue on Theory of Evolutionary Computation - Guest Editorial
- Theoretical Computer Science.
- Vol 832:1-2, September 2020, Elsevier. Link
- P.S. Oliveto, A. Sutton
- Special Issue on Theory of Evolutionary Algorithms 2014 - Guest Editorial
- Evolutionary Computation.
- Vol 23(4):509-511, 2015, MIT Press.
- P.S. Oliveto, X. Yao
- Special Issue on Evolutionary Computation - Guest Editorial
- Journal of Computer Science and Technology.
- Springer, 2012

Book Chapters

- P.S. Oliveto.
- Rigorous Performance Analysis of Hyper-Heuristics.
- Automated Machine Learning and Search.
- Nelishia Pillay, Rong Qu editors, (To appear).
- A. Lissovoi, P.S. Oliveto.
- Computational Complexity Analysis of Genetic Programming.
- Theory of Evolutionary Computation - Recent Developments in Discrete Optimization.
- Benjamin Doerr, Frank Neumann editors, Springer, 2020 (Arxiv Version).
- P.K. Lehre, P.S. Oliveto.
- Theoretical Analysis of Stochastic Search Algorithms.
- In Handbook of Heuristics.
- Mauricio G.C. Resende, Rafael Marti and Panos M. Pardalos editors, Springer, 2018.
- DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-07153-4_35-1.
- P.S. Oliveto, X. Yao.
- Runtime Analysis of Evolutionary Algorithms for Discrete Optimization.
- In Theory of Randomized Search Heuristics~Foundations and Recent Developments, pp. 21-52.
- B. Doerr and A. Auger editors, World Scientific, February 2011. (World Scientific)
- A. Athanasiou, M. De Felice, G. Oliveto, P. S. Oliveto.
- Dynamical Modeling and Parameter Identification of Seismic Isolation Systems by Evolution Strategies.
- In Computational Intelligence, Studies in Computational Intelligence series N.465, pp. 101-118.
- K. Madani, A. Dourado, A. Rosa, J. Felipe (Eds), Springer-Verlag, 2013.

Refereed Journal Papers

- D. Corus, A. Lissovoi, P. S. Oliveto, C. Witt
- On Steady-State Evolutionary Algorithms and Selective Pressure: Why Inverse Rank-Based Allocation of Reproductive Trials is Best
- ACM Transactions on Evolutionary Learning and Optimization
- To appear
- D. Corus, P. S. Oliveto
- On the Benefits of Populations for the Exploitation Speed of Standard Steady-State Genetic Algorithms
- Algorithmica,
- To appear: 2020. DOI: 10.1007/s00453-020-00743-1
- A. Lissovoi, P. S. Oliveto, J. A. Warwicker
- Simple Hyper-heuristics Control the Neighbourhood Size of Randomised Local Search Optimally for Leading ones. [Posted Online May 23, 2019]
- Evolutionary Computation (ECJ),
- 2019.
- A. Lissovoi, P. S. Oliveto
- On the Time and Space Complexity of Genetic Programming for Evolving Boolean Conjunctions [Download] .
- Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR),
- 2019.
- D. Corus, P. S. Oliveto, D. Yazdani
- Artificial Immune Systems Can Find Arbitrarily Good Approximations for the NP-Hard Number Partitioning Problem.
- Artificial Intelligence,
- 2019.
- DOI: 10.1016/j.artint.2019.03.001
- D. Corus, P. S. Oliveto, D. Yazdani
- When Hypermutations and Ageing Enable Artificial Immune Systems to Outperform Evolutionary Algorithms.
- Theoretical Computer Science,
- 2019.
- DOI: 10.1016/j.tcs.2019.03.002
- P. S. Oliveto, D. Sudholt, C. Zarges
- On the Benefits and Risks of Using Fitness Sharing for Multimodal Optimisation. [Download]
- Theoretical Computer Science,
- 2018.
- S. Nallaperuma, P. S. Oliveto, J. Perez Heredia, D. Sudholt.
- On the Analysis of Trajectory-Based Search Algorithms: When is it Beneficial to Reject Improvements? [Download]
- Algorithmica,
- Vol 81 (2) 858-885, 2019.
- P. S. Oliveto, T. Paixão, J. Pérez Heredia, D. Sudholt, B. Trubenová.
- How to Escape Local Optima in Black Box Optimisation: When Non-Elitism Outperforms Elitism. [Download]
- Algorithmica,
- Vol 80 (5), 1604-1633, 2018.
- D.Corus, P. S. Oliveto.
- Standard Steady State Genetic Algorithms can Hillclimb Faster than Mutation-only Evolutionary Algorithms. [Download]
- IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation,
- Vol. 22 (5), 720-732, 2018.
- D.-C. Dang, T. Friedrich, T. Kötzing, M. S. Krejca, P. K. Lehre, P. S. Oliveto, D. Sudholt, A. M. Sutton.
- Escaping Local Optima Using Crossover with Emergent Diversity. [Download]
- IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation,
- Vol. 22 (3), 484-497, 2018.
- D. Corus, J. He, T. Jansen, P. S. Oliveto, D. Sudholt, C. Zarges.
- On Easiest Functions for Mutation Operators in Bio-Inspired Optimisation. [Download]
- Algorithmica,
- Vol. 78 (2), 714-740, 2017.
- DOI: 10.1007/s00453-016-0201-4
- P.S.Oliveto, C.Witt.
- Improved Time Complexity Analysis of the Simple Genetic Algorithm.
- Theoretical Computer Science, (Elsevier)
- Vol. 605, 21-41, 2015.
- DOI: 10.1016/j.tcs.2015.01.002
- P.S.Oliveto, C.Zarges.
- Analysis of Diversity Mechanisms for Optimisation in Dynamic Environments with Low Frequencies of Change.
- Theoretical Computer Science (Elsevier),
- Vol. 561, 37-56, 2015.
- DOI: 10.1016/j.tcs.2014.10.028
- P.S.Oliveto, C.Witt.
- On the Runtime Analysis of the Simple Genetic Algorithm.
- Theoretical Computer Science (Elsevier),
- Vol. 545, 2-19, 2014.
- DOI: 10.1016/j.tcs.2013.06.015
- P.S.Oliveto, C.Witt.
- Simplified Drift Analysis for Proving Lower Bounds in Evolutionary Computation.
- Algorithmica (Springer),
- Vol. 59 (3), 369-386, 2011.
- T.Friedrich, P.S.Oliveto, D.Sudholt, C.Witt.
- Analysis of Diversity-Preserving Mechanisms for Global Exploration.
- Evolutionary Computation, (ECJ),
- Vol. 17 (4), 455-476, 2009.
- P.S.Oliveto, J.He, X.Yao.
- Analysis of the (1+1)-EA for Finding Approximate Solutions to Vertex Cover Problems.
- IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation (IEEE TEVC),
- Vol. 13 (5), 1006-1029, 2009.
- P.S.Oliveto, J.He, X.Yao.
- Time Complexity of Evolutionary Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization: A Decade of Results.
- International Journal of Automation and Computing (IJAC)
- Vol. 4 (3), 281-293, 2007.

Recent Refereed Conference Publications

- George T. Hall, Pietro S. Oliveto and Dirk Sudholt
- Fast Perturbative Algorithm Configurators. [Download Arxiv Version]
- In Proceedings of the 16th conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature ( PPSN XVI),
- Leiden, The Netherlands, September 5-9, 2020.
- George T. Hall, Pietro S. Oliveto, Dirk Sudholt
- Analysis of the Performance of Algorithm Configurators for Search Heuristics with Global Mutation Operators. (Best paper nomination)
- In Proceedings of the 2020 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO '20)
- Cancun, Mexico, pp. 823--831, ACM Press 2020. [Download]
- Pietro S. Oliveto, Dirk Sudholt, Carsten Witt
- A Tight Lower Bound on the Expected Runtime of Standard Steady State Genetic Algorithms.
- In Proceedings of the 2020 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO '20)
- Cancun, Mexico, pp. 1323--1331, ACM Press 2020. [Download]
- Michael Foster, Matthew Hughes, George O'Brien, Pietro S. Oliveto, James Pyle, Dirk Sudholt, James Williams
- Do Sophisticated Evolutionary Algorithms Perform Better than Simple Ones?
- In Proceedings of the 2020 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO '20)
- Cancun, Mexico, pp. 184--192, ACM Press 2020. [Download]
- A. Lissovoi, P. S. Oliveto, J. A. Warwicker
- How the Duration of the Learning Period Affects the Performance of Random Gradient Selection Hyper-Heuristics.
- In Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-20),
- New York, USA, February 7-12, pp. 2376-2383, AAAI Press 2020.
- D. Corus, P. S. Oliveto, D. Yazdani
- On Inversely Proportional Hypermutations with Mutation Potential.
- In Proceedings of the 2019 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO '19)
- Prague, Czech Republic, July 2019.
- B.Doerr, A. Lissovoi, P. S. Oliveto
- Evolving Boolean Functions with Conjunctions and Disjunctions via Genetic Programming.
- In Proceedings of the 2019 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO '19)
- Prague, Czech Republic, July 2019.
- D. Corus, P. S. Oliveto
- On the Benefits of Populations on the Exploitation Speed of Standard Steady-State Genetic Algorithms.
- In Proceedings of the 2019 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO '19)
- Prague, Czech Republic, July 2019.
- G. Hall, P. S. Oliveto, D. Sudholt
- On the Impact of the Cutoff Time on the Performance of Algorithm Configurators.
- In Proceedings of the 2019 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO '19)
- Prague, Czech Republic, July 2019.
- A. Lissovoi, P. S. Oliveto, J. A. Warwicker
- On the Time Complexity of Algorithm Selection Hyper-Heuristics for Multimodal Optimisation. [Download]
- In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence ( AAAI-19),
- Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, January 27 - February 1, 2019.
- D. Corus, P. S. Oliveto, D. Yazdani
- Fast Artificial Immune Systems. [Download Arxiv Version]
- In Proceedings of the 15th conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature ( PPSN XV),
- Coimbra, Portugal, September 8-12, 2018.
- D. Corus, P. S. Oliveto, D. Yazdani
- Artificial Immune Systems Can Find Arbitrarily Good Approximations for the NP-Hard Partition Problem. [Download Arxiv Version]
- In Proceedings of the 15th conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature ( PPSN XV),
- Coimbra, Portugal, September 8-12, 2018.
- B. Doerr, A. Lissovoi, P. S. Oliveto, J.A. Warwicker
- On the Runtime Analysis of Selection Hyper-Heuristics with Adaptive Learning Periods. [Download]
- In Proceedings of the 2018 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO '18)
- Kyoto, Japan, July 15-19, 2018.
- A. Lissovoi, P. S. Oliveto
- On the Time and Space Complexity of Genetic Programming for Evolving Boolean Conjunctions. [Download]
- In Proceedings of the Thirty-Second AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-18),
- New Orleans, Louisiana, US February 2-7, 2018.
- A. Lissovoi, P. S. Oliveto, J.A. Warwicker
- On the Runtime Analysis of Generalised Selection Hyper-heuristics for Pseudo-Boolean Optimisation. [Download]
- In Proceedings of the 2017 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO '17)
- Berlin, Germany, July 15-19, 2017.
- D. Corus, P. S. Oliveto, D. Yazdani
- On the Runtime Analysis of the Opt-IA Artificial Immune System. [Download]
- In Proceedings of the 2017 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO '17),
- Berlin, Germany, July 15-19, 2017.
- S. Nallaperuma, P. S. Oliveto, J. Perez Heredia, D. Sudholt
- When is it Beneficial to Reject Improvements? [Download]
- In Proceedings of the 2017 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO '17),
- Berlin, Germany, July 15-19, 2017.
- D.-C. Dang, T. Friedrich, T. Kötzing, M. S. Krejca, P. K. Lehre, P. S. Oliveto, D. Sudholt, A. M. Sutton
- Emergence of Diversity and its Benefits for Crossover in Genetic Algorithms. [Download]
- In Proceedings of the 14th Parallel Problem solving from Nature Conference (PPSN 2016),
- Edinburgh, Scotland, September 17-21, 2016. (Best paper nomination)
- D.-C. Dang, T. Friedrich, T. Kötzing, M. S. Krejca, P. K. Lehre, P. S. Oliveto, D. Sudholt, A. M. Sutton
- Escaping Local Optima with Diversity Mechanisms and Crossover. [Download]
- In Proceedings of the 2016 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO '16),
- Colorado, USA, July 20-24, 2016.
- P. S. Oliveto, T. Paixão, J. Pérez Heredia, D. Sudholt, B. Trubenová
- When Non-Elitism Outperforms Elitism for Crossing Fitness Valleys. [Download]
- In Proceedings of the 2016 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO '16),
- Colorado, USA, July 20-24, 2016.
- A. Mambrini, P.S. Oliveto
- On the Analysis of Simple Genetic Programming for Evolving Boolean Functions. [Download]
- In Proceedings of the 2016 European Conference on Genetic Programming, (EuroGP '16), pp. 99-114,
- Porto, Portugal, March 30-April 1, 2016.(Best paper nomination)
- D. Corus, J. He, T. Jansen, P.S.Oliveto, D. Sudholt, C.Zarges
- On Easiest Functions for Somatic Contiguous Hypermutations And Standard Bit Mutations.
- In Proceedings of the 2015 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO '15),
- Madrid, Spain, July 11-15, 2015.
- P.S.Oliveto, D. Sudholt, C.Zarges
- On the Runtime Analysis of Fitness Sharing Mechanisms.
- In Proceedings of the 13th Parallel Problem solving from Nature Conference (PPSN 2014),
- Ljubljana, Slovenia, September 13-17, 2014.
- P.S.Oliveto, D. Sudholt.
- On the Runtime Analysis of Stochastic Ageing Mechanisms.
- In Proceedings of the 2014 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO '14),
- Vancouver, Canada, July 12-16, 2014. (Best paper award)
- P.S.Oliveto, C. Zarges.
- Analysis of Diversity Mechanisms for Robust Optimisation in Dynamic Environments with Low Frequencies of Change.
- In Proceedings of the 2013 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO'13),
- Amsterdam, the Netherlands, July 6-10, 2013.
- P.S.Oliveto, C. Witt.
- Improved Runtime Analysis of the Simple Genetic Algorithm.
- In Proceedings of the 2013 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO'13),
- Amsterdam, the Netherlands, July 6-10, 2013.
- T. Jansen, P.S.Oliveto, C. Zarges.
- Approximating Vertex Cover Using Edge-Based Representations.
- In Proceedings of Foundations of Genetic Algorithms XII (FOGA'13),
- Adelaide, Australia, January 16-20, 2013.
- P.S.Oliveto, C. Witt.
- On the Runtime Analysis of the Simple Genetic Algorithm.
- In Proceedings of the 2012 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO'12),
- Philadelphia, USA, July 7-11, 2012.
- A. Athanasiou, M. De Felice, G. Oliveto, P. S. Oliveto
- Evolutionary Algorithms for the Identification of Structural Systems in Earthquake Engineering.
- In Proceedings of the International Conference on Evolutionary Computation Theory and Applications (ECTA'11),
- Paris, france, October 24-26, 2011.(Best paper nomination)
- T. Jansen, P. S. Oliveto, C. Zarges
- On the Analysis of the Immune Inspired B-Cell Algorithm for the Vertex Cover Problem.
- In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Artificial Immune Systems (ICARIS'11),
- Cambridge, UK, July 18-21, 2011. (Best paper award)
- F. Neumann, P. S. Oliveto, G. Rudolph, D. Sudholt
- On the Effectiveness of Crossover for Migration in Parallel Evolutionary Algorithms.
- In Proceedings of the 2011 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO'11),
- Dublin, Ireland, July 12-16, 2011.
- S. Kratsch, P.K. Lehre, F. Neumann, P.S. Oliveto
- Fixed Parameter Evolutionary Algorithms and Maximum Leaf Spanning Trees: A Matter of Mutation.
- In Proceedings of the 11th Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN'10),
- Krakow, Poland, September 11-15, 2010.
- T. Kötzing, P. K. Lehre, F. Neumann, P. S. Oliveto.
- Ant colony optimization and the minimum cut problem.
- In Proceedings of the 2010 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO'10),
- Portland, Oregon, July 7-11, 2010.
- A. Chandra, P. S. Oliveto, X. Yao.
- Co-evolution of Optimal Agents for the Alternating Offers Bargaining Game.
- In Proceedings of the European Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary Computation (EvoApplications 2010),
- Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey, April 7-9, 2010.
- F.Neumann, P.S.Oliveto, C. Witt.
- Theoretical Analysis of Fitness-Proportional Selection - Landscapes and Efficiency.
- In Proceedings of the 2009 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO'09),
- Montreal, Canada, July 8-12, 2009.
- P.S.Oliveto, P.K.Lehre, F.Neumann.
- Theoretical Analysis of Rank-based Mutation - Combining Exploration and Exploitation.
- In Proceedings of the IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation 2009(CEC'09),
- Trondheim, Norway, May 18-21, 2009. (Best student paper nomination)
- P.S.Oliveto, C.Witt.
- Simplified Drift Analysis for Proving Lower Bounds in Evolutionary Computation.
- In Proceedings of the Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN'08),
- Dortmund, Germany, September 13-17, 2008.
- T. Friedrich, P.S.Oliveto, D.Sudholt, C.Witt.
- Theoretical Analysis of Diversity Mechanisms for Global Exploration.
- In Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO'08),
- Atlanta, Georgia, USA, July 12-16, 2008. (Best paper award)
- P.S.Oliveto, J.He, X.Yao.
- Analysis of Population-based Evolutionary Algorithms for the Vertex Cover Problem.
- In Proceedings of the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI'08),
- Hong Kong, June 1-6, 2008. Pictures
- P.S.Oliveto, J.He, X.Yao.
- Evolutionary Algorithms and the Vertex Cover Problem .
- In Proceedings of the IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC'07),
- Singapore, September 25-28, 2007. Pictures

- Co-Chair of the 2019 Foundations of Computational Intelligence (IEEE FOCI 2019) Symposium
- Xiamen, China, December 2019.
- Co-Chair of the 2018 Foundations of Computational Intelligence (IEEE FOCI 2018) Symposium
- Bengaluru, India, November 2018.
- Co-Chair of the 2017 Foundations of Computational Intelligence (IEEE FOCI 2017) Symposium
- November 27 - December 1, 2017, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.
- Co-Chair of the 2016 Foundations of Computational Intelligence (IEEE FOCI 2016) Symposium
- December 6 - 9, 2016, Athens, Greece.
- Co-Chair of the 2015 IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computational Intelligence (IEEE FOCI 2015)
- December 7 - 10, 2015, Capetown, South Africa.

Co-Chair of the IEEE WCCI 2016 Special Session on "Theoretical Foundations of Bio-inspired Computation"

Co-Chair of the IEEE CEC 2015 Special Session on "Theoretical Foundations of Bio-inspired Computation"

Co-Chair of the IEEE WCCI 2014 Special Session on "Theoretical Foundations of Bio-inspired Computation"

Co-Chair of the IEEE CEC 2013 Special Session on "Theoretical Foundations of Bio-inspired Computation"

Programme Committees

AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence: since AAAI-19.
International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence: IJCAI'15, and since IJCAI-19.
ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference: since GECCO'08.
IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation: since CEC'07
ACM Foundations Of Genetic Algorithms: since FOGA'09
International Conference in Parallel Problem Solving from Nature: Since PPSN 2010.
European Conference on Evolutionary Computation in Combinatorial Optimisation: Since EvoCOP'18

Organising Committees

- 9th Workshop on Theory of Randomised Search Heuristics (ThRaSH 2015).
- 11-12 September 2015, Sheffield, UK.
- 7th Workshop on Theory of Randomised Search Heuristics (ThRaSH 2013).
- 13-14 September 2013, Aberystwyth, Wales.
- 27^th British Colloquium for Theoretical Computer Science (BCTCS'11)
- 18-21 April 2011, Birmingham, UK.
- Minisymposium on "Randomized Search Heuristics: Theoretical Aspects and Real World Applications" (Flyer)
- at SIAM Conference on Optimization (SiamOPT11) 16-19 May 2011, Darmstadt, Germany.
- 3rd Workshop on Theory of Randomised Search Heuristics (TRSH09).
- 19-20 October 2009, Birmingham, UK.

Journal editing and reviewing

Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation (IEEE TEVC) journal.

BMC Evolutionary Biology (Springer Nature).
Nature Communications (Springer Nature).
Theoretical Computer Science (Elsevier).
Journal of Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines (Springer).
Algorithmica (Springer).
IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks (IEEE-TNN).
IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics
Evolutionary Computation (MITpress).
Information Sciences (Elsevier).
IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation (IEEE-TEVC).
International Journal of Metaheuristics (Inderscience).
Artificial Intelligence (Elsevier).
Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence (Elsevier).
Journal of Computer Science and Technology
Natural Computing (Springer).
Information Processing Letters (Elsevier).
Soft Computing (Springer).
Applied Mathematics and Computation (Elsevier).

Grants & Fellowships

COST Action CA15140: Improving Applicability of Nature-Inspired Optimisation by Joining Theory and Practice (ImAppNIO)
EPSRC Early Career Fellowship (2015-2020) Rigorous Runtime Analysis of Bio-inspired Computing ( EP/M004252/1 )
Vice Chancellor Fellowship, University of Sheffield (2013-2016).
EPSRC Postdoctoral Fellowship in Theoretical Computer Science grant (2010-2013), "Rigorous Runtime Analysis of Nature Inspired Meta-heuristics" ( EP/H028900/1 )
EPSRC PhD+ Postdoctoral Fellowship grant (2009). ( EP/P502322/1)
IEEE student travel grant for the CEC'09 conference attendance.
IEEE student travel grant for the FOCI'07 conference attendance.