Introduction

This conference (OPTDES 2004) is fourth in the conference series titled Optimization in Industry  organized by Engineering Conferences International (ECI), which is the successor to the United Engineering Foundation (UEF) Conferences. This conference was previously held in Florida (USA), Banff (Canada) and Tuscany (Italy) as UEF conference series on Optimization. OPTDES 4 will be held as a co-operative conference with ECI.

OPTDES IV will concentrate upon state-of-the-art and cutting edge research and developments in optimization of primarily engineering systems/structures/shapes/materials, with an emphasis upon latest industrial applications and real-world problems. Optimization software for both industry and education is also an important area covered in this conference.

In recent years, a growing interest in computationally hard multiple objective optimization problems, e.g. strongly non- linear multiple objective optimization problems and hard multiple objective combinatorial optimization problems have been noticed. The use of metaheuristics, e.g. genetic algorithm, tabu search or simulated annealing, seems to be the most promising approach to such problems because of their efficiency, generality and relative simplicity of implementation.This conference seeks to address the use of metaheuristics and Artificial Intelligence techniques by organizing special sessions around the core topics.

Supported by

• Toyota Motor Company, Tokyo, Japan.
• Knowledge Solutions Group Inc. Japan www.ksgcorp.jp
• Rockwell Collins Corp., USA
• NASA, USA.
• Engineering Conferences International (ECI), USA
• Journal of Evolutionary Optimization www.jeo.org

Themes

This conference will seek convergence from the conference participants on the following questions:

1. What is the State-of-Art reflected in the design theory/optimization theory/information sciences literature with respect to using your work in industry ?
2. What are roadblocks/hurdles in implementing your work in industry ?
3. What research needs to be undertaken that will promote the use of your work in industry ?
4. What are the elements of a design theory and AI techniques necessary to support multidisciplinary optimization and design with high-end computing at its core?
5. What new developments in AI in design, analysis, and optimization methods are needed to exploit the full potential of the new hardware/software architectures for high speed and intelligent computing that offer massively parallel processing in a heterogeneous, distributed computing environment that will support multidisciplinary optimization?

Keynote Lectures

There will be a number of plenary lectures, one for each day of the conference.

• Professor John Gero, will speak on Situated Design Optimization How Situated Cognition Can Assist Optimization.
• Professor Prabhat Hajela
• Professor Ian Parmee
• Dr. Garret N. Vanderplaats
• Other Keynote speakers are being finalized now.

Engineering Conferences International (ECI) is the successor to the United Engineering Foundation Conferences. ECI offices are located at 6 MetroTech Center, Brooklyn, NY 11201; Tel: 1-718-260-3743, Fax: 1-718-260-3754, E-mail: bkhengconfintl@aol.com, WWW: www.engconfintl.org.