Xiaodong Li

Professional Activities (Current)

IEEE CIS Distinguished Lecturer (2024 - 2026).
Member of ARC College of Experts (2023 to 2025).
General Chair, The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2024), 14 - 18 July 2024, Melbourne, Australia.
Technical Chair, IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (IEEE WCCI 2024) - Congress on Evolutionary Computation (IEEE CEC 2024), 30 June - 5 July 2024, Yokohama, Japan.
Program Chair, The International Conference on Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization (EMO 2025), 4 - 7 March 2025, Canberra, Australia.
IEEE Fellow (from 2020); Member of IEEE Computational Intelligence Society.
Member, Intelligent Systems Applications Technical Committee (ISATC), IEEE Computational Intelligence Society.
Member, Steering committee of Simulated Evolution And Learning (SEAL).
Member, Advisory Board of the Center of Computational Science.
Scientific Advisor, Scientific Advisory Board, Complexica. Complexica is a leading provider of Artificial Intelligence software for optimising sales & marketing activities, ranging from promotional planning, pricing, and product mix optimisation, through to sales force automation, CRM, and multi-channel quoting and order processing.

Past Activities

Member of the Editorial Board, Journal of Swarm Intelligence (Springer).
Associate Editor, International Journal of Swarm Intelligence Research (IJSIR).
Associate Editor, the journal of IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation (2008 - 2022).
Tutorial Co-Chair, 2022 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI'2022), 18-23 July, 2022, Padua, Italy.
Workshop Co-Organizer, GECCO 2022 Workshop on Large-Scale Evolutionary Optimization and Learning (LEOL), 9 - 13 July 2022, Boston, USA.
Organizer, IEEE CEC 2022 Competition on Dynamic Optimization Problems Generated by Generalized Moving Peaks Benchmark, IEEE WCCI 2022, 18 - 23 July, 2022, Paudua, Italy.
Member, Task Force on Swarm Intelligence, IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (Vice Chair, 2012 - 2016).
Vice Chair, Task Force on Multi-modal Optimization, IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (from 2015).
Member, Task Force on Evolutionary Computation in Dynamic and Uncertain Environments (ECiDUE), IEEE Computational Intelligence Society.
Special Sessions Co-Chair, 2020 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence, 1-4 December, 2020, Canberra, Australia.
Organizer, GECCO 2019 Competition on Niching Methods for Multimodal Optimization, July 13-17, 2019, Prague, Czech Republic.
Technical Chair, The IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC'2018), part of WCCI'2018, Rio de janeiro, Brazil, July 8 - 13, 2018.
Program Chair, The 31st Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI'2018), 4-7 December 2018, Wellington, New Zealand.
Organizer, The 3nd International Workshop on "Advances in Multimodal Optimization", September 8 - 12, 2018, Coimbra, Portugal.
Organizer, GECCO 2018 Competition on Niching Methods for Multimodal Optimization, July 15 - 19, 2018, Kyoto, Japan.
Technical Committee Co-Chair, The Ninth International Conference on Swarm Intelligence (ICSI 2018), June 17 - 22, 2018, Shanghai, China.
Member, Senior Program Committee, the 33nd AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-19), January 27 - February 1, 2019, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.
Competitions Chair, the 10th Edition of International Conference Series on Evolutionary Multi- Criterion Optimization (EMO 2019), March 10 - 13, 2019, East Lansing, Michigan, USA.
Co-chair of the track on Ant Colony Optimization and Swarm Intelligence, The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2017), July 15-19, 2017, Berlin, Germany.
General Chair, The Australasian Conference on Artificial Life and Computational Intelligence (ACALCI 2017), Melbourne, Australia.
General Chair, The 30th Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI'17), Melbourne, Australia.
Technical Committee Co-Chair, The Eighth International Conference on Swarm Intelligence (ICSI 2017), Fukuoka, Japan, July 27 - August 1, 2017.
Technical Committee Co-Chair, The International Conference on Simulated Evolution And Learning (SEAL'2017), Shenzhen, China, 2017.
Organizer, 2017 IEEE CEC Special session/competition on Niching Methods for Multimodal Optimization, June 5-8, 2017, Donostia - San Sebastian, Spain.
Co-chair of the track on Ant Colony Optimization and Swarm Intelligence, The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2016), July 20-24, 2016, Denver, Colorado, USA.
Organizer, GECCO 2016 Competition on Niching Methods for Multimodal Optimization, July 20-24, 2016, Denver, Colorado, USA.
Program Co-chair, The Australasian Conference on Artificial Life and Computational Intelligence (ACALCI 2016), February 2-5, 2016, Canberra, Australia.
Technical Program Chair, The Tenth International Conference on Swarm Intelligence (ANTS 2016), September 7-9, 2016, Brussels, Belgium.
Organizer, 2016 IEEE CEC Special session/competition on Niching Methods for Multimodal Optimization, July 25-29, 2016, Vancouver, Canada.
Former Chair (from 2012 - 2016), Task Force on Large Scale Global Optimization, IEEE Computational Intelligence Society.
Vice Chair, Computational Intelligence Society Chapter, IEEE Victorian Section, Melbourne, Australia (2012 - 2016).
Organizing chair, 2015 IEEE CEC Special Session on Niching Methods for Multimodal Optimization, May 25-28, 2015, Sendai, Japan.
Organizing chair, 2015 IEEE CEC Competition on Niching Methods for Multimodal Optimization, May 25-28, 2015, Sendai, Japan.
Organizer, 2015 IEEE CEC Special Session on Large Scale Global Optimization, May 25-28, 2015, Sendai, Japan.
Organizing chair, 2015 IEEE CEC Competition on Large Scale Global Optimization, May 25-28, 2015, Sendai, Japan.
Technical Committee Co-Chair, Sixth International Conference on Swarm Intelligence and the Second BRICS Congress on Computational Intelligence (ICSI-CCI'2015), June 26 - 29, 2015, Beijing, China.
Publication Chair, 2015 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI 2015), December 7-10, 2015, Cape town, South Africa.
Organizer, 2014 International Workshop on Advances in Multimodal Optimization, 13 - 17 September 2014, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Technical Committee Co-Chair, International Conference on Swarm Intelligence (ICSI'2014), 17 - 20 October 2014, Hefei, China.
Technical Co-Chair, Tenth International Conference on Simulated Evolution And Learning (SEAL 2014), 15-18 December 2014, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Panel member for "Big Data and Computational Intelligence Panel" in the upcoming WCCI 2014.
Organizing chair, 2014 IEEE CEC Special Session on Niching Methods for Multimodal Optimization, 6 - 11 July 2014, Beijing, China.
Organizing chair, 2014 IEEE CEC Special Session on Large Scale Global Optimization, 6 - 11 July 2014, Beijing, China.
Organizing chair, 2013 IEEE CEC Special Session on Niching Methods for Multimodal Optimization, 20 - 23 June 2013, Cancun, Mexico.
Organizing chair, 2013 IEEE CEC Special Session on Large Scale Global Optimization, 20 - 23 June 2013, Cancun, Mexico.
Program Chair, IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation 2012 (CEC 2012), part of 2012 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI 2012), 10 - 15 June 2012.
Special session chair, Third International Conference on Swarm Intelligence (ICSI'2012), Shenzhen, China, 17 - 20 June 2012.
Publicity chair, Second International Conference on Swarm Intelligence (ICSI'2011), Chongqing, China, 12 - 15 June 2011.
Technical Committee Chair, International Conference on Swarm Intelligence (ICSI'2010), 6 - 9 June 2010.
Publicity Co-Chair, Seventh International Conference on Swarm Intelligence (ANTS 2010), 8 - 10 September 2010.
Organizing chair, 2010 IEEE CEC Special Session on Niching Methods for Multimodal Optimization, 18 - 23 July 2010, Barcelona, Spain.
Organizing chair, First Australasian Computational Intelligence Summer School (ACISS'09), 30 November - 1 December, 2009.
Program Co-chair, 22nd Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI'09), 1 - 4 December 2009.
Visiting research fellow at CERCIA, University of Birmingham (12 July - 19 September 2008; 13 - 22 May 2009; 28 August - 11 September 2009), funded by an EPSRC grant.
General Chair, Seventh International Conference on Simulated Evolution And Learning (SEAL'08), 7 - 10 December 2008.
Publicity chair and steering committee member, IEEE Swarm Intelligence Symposium 2007 (SIS2007), Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, 1 - 5 April, 2007.
Organizing chair, Special session on Swarm Intelligence, CEC'06.
Tutorial and special sessions chair, Sixth International Conference on Evolution And Learning (SEAL'06), Hefei, China, 15 - 18 October, 2006.
Organizing chair, Special session on Swarm Intelligence, CEC 2004.
Organizing chair, Special session on Swarm Intelligence and Its Applications, CEC 2003.

Journal Editorships

Associate Editor, the journal of IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation.
Associate Editor, the journal of Swarm Intelligence (Springer).
Associate Editor, the International Journal of Swarm Intelligence Research (IJSIR).
Member, editorial board for International Journal of Computational Intelligence (IJCI).
Member, IASR Board of Editors for the Journal of Advanced Research in Evolutionary Algorithms (JAREA)
Guest editor, Special Issue of Information Sciences Journal (ISJ) on "Nature-Inspired Algorithms for Large Scale Global Optimization", September 2015.
Guest editor, Special issue on Swarm Intelligence, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, August 2009
Guest editor, special issue on Evolutionary Optimization and Learning, Journal of Soft Computing (to appear).
Guest editor, special issue on Simulated Evolution and Learning, Journal of Evolutionary Intelligence, Vol. 2, 2009
Guest editor, special issue on Evolutionary Optimization, Journal of Computer Science Technology, Vol.23, No.1, January 2008.
Guest editor, special issue on Simulated Evolution and Learning, International Journal of Computational Intelligence and Applications (IJCIA), World Scientific Press, Vol.7, No.2, June 2008,
Guest editor, special issue on Theoretical Foundations of Evolutionary Computation, Journal of Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines, Springer, Vol.9, No.2, June 2008
Guest editor, special issue on Evolutionary Learning and Optimization, Connection Science, Vol.19, No.4, December 2007

External PhD Examinations

PhD thesis, Department of Information Science, University of Otago, New Zealand, 2004.
PhD thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Pretoria, South Africa, 2005.
PhD thesis, Department of Information Science, University of Otago, New Zealand, 2007.
PhD thesis, Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Australia, 2009.
PhD thesis, School of Aerospace, Civil and Mechanical Engineering, University of New South Wales, Australia, 2009.
PhD thesis, School of Engineering and Information Technology, University College, University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy, Australia, 2009.
PhD thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Pretoria, South Africa, 2009.
PhD thesis, School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of Queensland, Australia, 2011.
PhD thesis, Department of Statistics, Macquarie University, Australia, 2012.
PhD thesis, School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 2013.
PhD thesis, School of Computer Science, University of Adelaide, 2013.
PhD thesis, Faculty of ICT, Swinburne University of Technology, 2013.
PhD thesis, School of Science, Information Technology and Engineering, Faculty of Science, Federation University Australia, 2014.
PhD thesis, School of Computer Science, The University of Adelaide, 2018.
PhD Thesis, School of Engineering and Computer Science, Victoria University of Wellington, 2018

Invited Talks and Tutorials

Invited talk, "Decision Making in Evolutionary Optimization and Beyond", AJCAI 2023 Workshop: Machine Learning for Data-driven Optimization", 28 November 2023, Brisbane, Australia.
Invited talk, "Adaptive Solution Prediction via Machine Learning for Large-Scale Combinatorial Optimization", 2023 Workshop on Futures of Computational Intelligence, 18 - 19 November 2023, Shenzhen, China.
Invited talk, "What Can Machine Learning Do to Facilitate Decision Making in Optimization?", 2023 IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Summer School and Summit Forum, 24 - 27 August 2023, Shenzhen, China.
Tutorial, "Large-Scale Optimization and Learning", presented at GECCO2023, 16 July 2023, Lisbon, Portugal (mp4 video file).
Invited keynote talk, "Decision Making in Evolutionary Optimization and Beyond", Workshop on Evolutionary Computation and Decision Making, GECCO2023, 16 July 2023, Lisbon, Portugal (mp4 video file).
Invited webinar talk, "Solution Prediction via Machine Learning for Combinatorial Optimization", IEEE CIS Taskforce on Evolutionary Scheduling and Combinatorial Optimisation, 26 October 2022 (or the same video at bilibili.com).
Tutorial, "Niching Methods for Multimodal Optimization",IEEE WCCI 2020, 19 July 2020, Glasgow, UK (mp4 video file).
Tutorial, "Evolutionary large-scale global optimization - an introduction (Part I)", IEEE CEC'2019, 10 June 2019, Wellington, New Zealand.
Invited lectures on "Swarm Intelligence", Workshop on Swarm Intelligence, SUSTech, Shenzhen, China, 24 March 2018.
Invited lectures on "Evolutionary Methods", The 6th International Optimisation Summer School, Kioloa, NSW, Australia, 14 - 19 January 2018.
Tutorial on "Evolutionary Large-Scale Global Optimization: An Introduction", IEEE CEC'2017, GECCO'2017, SEAL'2017.
Invited keynote talk, "Seeking multiple solutions: multi-modal optimisation using niching methods", SEAL'2017 (11 November 2017); also invited talk at AMSIOptimise’17 (27 June 2017) (Here are some YouTube demos: DE/nrand/1 on Himmelblau 2D; DE/nrand/1 for Shubert 2D; DEnrand on Deb's function with 100 optima, 500 pop size).
Tutorial on "Recent Advances in Multi-modal Optimization using Niching Methods", IEEE CEC 2016, Vancouver, Canada, July 2016.
Tutorial on "Decomposition and Cooperative Coevolution Techniques for Large Scale Global Optimization", Sun Yat-sen University, Xidian University, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Guangdong University of Technology, China, April 2015.
Tutorial on "Swarm Intelligence", Xidian University, South China University of Technology, China, April 2015.
Tutorial on "Decomposition and Cooperative Coevolution Techniques for Large Scale Global Optimization" at WCCI'2014 and GECCO'2014.
I was on a short media interview by "theAge" Fairfax Science Columnist Peter Spink on "Has the Turing Test really been passed?", 10 July 2014.
Tutorial speaker, on "Decomposition via Cooperative Coevolution for Large Scale Global Optimization", 2013 IEEE CEC, 20 - 23 June 2013, Cancun, Mexico.
Invited talk on "Introduction to Particle Swarm Optimization ", Victorian University of Wellington, New Zealand, 4 May 2012.
Invited lecturer, an IEEE & ITEE Evening Lecture on "Swarm Intelligence", Melbourne, Australia, 6:30 - 7:30pm, 5 September 2012.
Invited lecturer, "Decomposition via Cooperative Coevolution for Large Scale Global Optimization ", Xidian University, Xi'an, China, 28 and 30 October 2012.
Invited lecturer, two talks on "Swarm Intelligence" and "Decomposition via Cooperative Coevolution for Large Scale Global Optimization ", 2012 International Workshop on Nature Inspired Computation and Applications (IWNICA'12), Hefei, China, 22 - 25 October 2012.
Invited lecturer, "Advances in Particle Swarm Optimization", Sun Yat-sen University Computational Intelligence Winter School 2011, Guangzhou, China, 24 - 28 January 2011.
A seminar talk on "Particle Swarm Optimization ", School of Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences, RMIT University, 28 May 2010.
A seminar on "Recent developments on Particle Swarm Optimization ", University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), China, 24 September 2008.
A tutorial on "Particle Swarm Optimization", with Prof. Andries P. Engelbrecht, GECCO'07, London, UK, 7 - 11 July 2007.
A tutorial on "Particle Swarm Optimization ", SEAL'06, Hefei, China, 15 - 18 October 2006.
A seminar talk on "Multiobjective Optimization using Particle Swarms", Monash University, Melbourne, 2005.

Photos

I was giving a short speech during the SEAL'08 conference dinner (to thank everyone making the conference a success).
The dean of Engineering of the Melbourne University giving an opening speech at SEAL'08 (Mengjie Zhang, Michael Kirley, and I were sitting at the front rows).