I’ve been sitting on this for a while I waited for EuroGP to get their web site updated; they have, freeing me up to do a little unabashed chest-thumping, leavened with some praise for UMM‘s excellent students.
A few weeks from now the Eleventh European conference on Genetic Programming (EuroGP) will happen in Naples Italy. The only other time I’ve been to EuroGP was in 2001 when we were here on sabbatical the first time. I really love the conference, and it’s small and intimate and tends to have a really high signal-to-noise ratio. Unfortunately, it’s also an expensive flight from Minnesota for a three day event, and the timing tends to be really awkward in my teaching schedule, so I’ve never made it back. One of my many fond memories of that conference was winning the best paper award with Riccardo Poli for a pair of papers we’d written together as part of that sabbatical visit. 
(Oddly, both times I’ve attended have happened to be the only two times it’s been in Italy. The little photo is from the 2001 event at Lake Como.)
The best paper nominations for this year’s event have been released, and I’m quite excited that both of the papers that I submitted this year are on the list. One is another join project with Riccardo, and the other is a paper with two UMM undergrads: Brian Ohs and Tyler Hutchison.
That’s Tyler in the photo up top, presenting some work he did with Andy Korth and I that won the best student paper award at MICS a year ago; Tyler also did the cover illustration for the forthcoming book Riccardo, Bill Langdon, and I are just wrapping up. In a big happy, Tyler was able to pull together the funds to fly out for the conference, so we’ll be able to do a joint presentation enlivened by his presence and cool drawings. Unfortunately Brian can’t make it, but it’s cool that Tyler can; this will be the first of my students co-authors that’s made it to a European conference with me.
The competition is gonna be tough for the best paper award, including a very nice paper by one of Riccardo’s students (Stephen Dignum). Fingers crossed!
The full program is also now on-line (as a PDF) — it looks like some cool material. I’m quite looking forward to the conference, although I must say I’m a bit nervous about the ongoing trash crisis in Naples (here and there).
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