A Word from the Chair of SIGEVO

Welcome to the Proceedings of GECCO-2011, the thirteenth GECCO, and a "recombination" of the 20th International Conference on Genetic Algorithms (ICGA) and the 16th Genetic Programming Conference (GP). First, Pier Luca Lanzi did a super-human job as General Chair of GECCO-2011; he seemed to be everywhere doing everything just in time. Natalio Krasnogor, as Editor-in-Chief, led the effort to select papers for publication. The quality of the papers submitted to GECCO is very high, and GECCO has the most rigorous selection process in the field of Evolutionary Computation. The combined effect means that the best papers and most important work in the field of Evolutionary Computation is presented at the GECCO conference.

If you were not able to attend GECCO-2011 in person, the Proceedings are in the ACM Digital Library; they are globally accessible and readily found, which benefits both readers and authors. The highly decentralized review process used for reviewing papers for GECCO assures that each category of papers is reviewed by experts in that subspecialty.

ACM SIGEVO

The members of ACM SIGEVO, sponsor of GECCO, have already seen major benefits of becoming a part of ACM. In addition to being part of the ACM Digital Library, another key benefit is the outstanding newsletter, SIGEVOlutions, produced by editor Pier Luca Lanzi and an excellent editorial board. If you are accessing these proceedings and are not a member of SIGEVO, please consider joining (for the low price of $25/year for non-students, and $10/year for student members). In addition to SIGEVOlutions, members receive a major discount for GECCO registration. The journal Evolutionary Computation is now also available as part of the ACM Digital Library due to the efforts of ACM SIGEVO.

Involvement in SIGEVO

SIGEVO is now a regular SIG of the ACM. Our bylaws are on the SIGEVO web pages, as is a list of the Executive Committee-an 18-member body. I'd like to thank the officers who have served with me this last year: John Koza (Vice Chair), Una-May O'Reilly (Secretary), and Wolfgang Banzhaf (Treasurer). I have served as Chair of SIGEVO for the last 4 years, and will be stepping down in 2011 to give new faces the chance to lead our community. If you are interested in devoting some time and energy to GECCO or SIGEVO, please let us know. You can contact me at whitley@cs.colostate.edu.

It has been a pleasure and an honor to chair SIGEVO. I have been a part of the evolutionary computation community for 25 years, and in many ways it has become another family. I look forward to continuing involvement in SIGEVO .