The BBVA Foundation and SEIO award a publication co-authored by BCAM Scientific Director Jose A. Lozano
The four authors will receive the award in October for the article Construct, Merge, Solve & Adapt A New General Combinatorial Optimisation Algorithm
The Society of Statistics and Operations Reseach (SEIO) and the BBVA Foundation have awarded the publication Construct, Merge, Solve & Adapt: A new general algorithm for combinatorial optimization in which Jose Antonio Lozano, current Scientific Director of BCAM, co-authored. The article, published before his incorporation to the centre, has won the price in the category Best Methodological Contribution in Operations Research. The ceremony will take place in October in Bilbao at the Foundation's headquarters.
The scientific contribution has been published in the journal Computers & Operations Research, and has been developed together with Christian Blum (CSIC Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, Spain), Manuel López-Ibáñez (University of Manchester, United Kingdom) and Pedro Pinacho (University of Concepción, Chile).
The research proposes a new method for solving combinatorial optimization problems. This publication presents a new general metaheuristic framework with a clever inclusion of problem reductions (subproblems) and exact intermediate solutions. The results of these subproblems are used to improve the solving process. This paper illustrates, through the use of interesting test cases, how metaheuristics can be applied to a wide range of contexts.
About Prof. Jose A. Lozano
Jose A. Lozano is the Scientific Director of BCAM since 2019 and Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the UPV/EHU since 2009. His research has focused, among other areas, on Artificial Intelligence and particularly in the fields of data analysis and combinatorial optimisation. He leads the Intelligent Systems Group research group since 2004 and BCAM's research line in Machine Learning since 2014.
In his extensive career as a researcher, he has published more than a hundred articles in scientific journals receiving more than 15,000 citations, has supervised 22 doctoral theses and has written two books. In addition, his international prestige has led him to be associate editor of the most relevant journals in the field of Artificial Intelligence and to organise the international conferences with the greatest impact in the field.
In 2021 he was appointed the first and only Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (IEEE) in the Basque Country.
