GECCO 2025 | Accepted Papers

The following papers have been nominated for a Best Paper Award.
For each Best Paper (one per track, or group of small tracks), the final choice will be made by GECCO attendees.
Regarding the small tracks, the Best Paper Award will be shared between two tracks with the following pairings: BBSR - ENUM; CS - NE; GA - SI; GECH - THEORY.

List of Best Paper Nominations

Track	Title	Authors
BBSR	Why We Should be Benchmarking Evolutionary Algorithms on Neural Network Training Tasks	Katherine Mary Malan (University of South Africa), Mario Andrés Muñoz (University of Melbourne)
BBSR	When Does Neuroevolution Outcompete Reinforcement Learning in Transfer Learning Tasks?	Eleni Nisioti (IT University of Copenhagen), Erwan Plantec (IT University of Copenhagen), Milton Llera Montero (IT University of Copenhagen), Joachim Winther Pedersen (IT University of Copenhagen), Sebastian Risi (IT University of Copenhagen)
CS	Extract-QD Framework: A Generic Approach for Quality-Diversity in Noisy, Stochastic or Uncertain Domains	Manon Flageat (Imperial College), Johann Huber (Sorbonne Université), François Helenon (Sorbonne Université), Stephane Doncieux (Sorbonne Université), Antoine Cully (Imperial College)
ECOM	Large Neighborhood Search for Capacitated Facility Location with Customer Incompatibilities	Ida Gjergji (TU Wien), Lucas Kletzander (TU Wien), Nysret Musliu (TU Wien), Andrea Schaerf (University of Udine)
ECOM	On Revealing the Hidden Problem Structure in Real-World and Theoretical Problems Using Walsh Coefficient Influence	Michal Witold Przewozniczek (Wroclaw University of Science and Technology), Francisco Chicano (University of Málaga), Renato Tinós (University of São Paulo), Jakub Nalepa (Silesian University of Technology), Bogdan Ruszczak (Opole University of Technology), Agata Maria Wijata (Silesian University of Technology)
ECOM	To Repair or Not to Repair? Investigating the Importance of AB-Cycles for the State-of-the-Art TSP Heuristic EAX	Jonathan Heins (Technische Universität Dresden), Darrell Whitley (Colorado State University), Pascal Kerschke (Technische Universität Dresden, ScaDS.AI Dresden/Leipzig)
EML	Evolutionary Quadtree Pooling for Convolutional Neural Networks	Po-Wei Harn (National Central University), Bo Hui (University of Tulsa), Libo Sun (Auburn University), Wei-Shinn Ku (Auburn University)
EML	Evolution of Inherently Interpretable Visual Control Policies	Camilo De La Torre (University Toulouse Capitole, IRIT - CNRS UMR5505), Giorgia Nadizar (MIGe, University of Trieste), Yuri Lavinas (University Toulouse Capitole, IRIT - CNRS UMR5505), Hervé Luga (Institut de recherche en informatique de Toulouse: Toulouse, Midi-Pyrénées, FR), Dennis George Wilson (ISAE-Supaero, Université de Toulouse), Sylvain Cussat-Blanc (University Toulouse Capitole, IRIT - CNRS UMR5505)
EML	Dynamic Influence For Coevolutionary Agents	Everardo Gonzalez (Oregon State University), Gaurav Dixit (Oregon State University), Kagan Tumer (Oregon State University)
EMO	Exploring Phase-Specific Configuration of Interactive Evolutionary Multiobjective Optimization Methods	Giomara Larraga (University of Jyväskylä), Kaisa Miettinen (University of Jyväskylä)
EMO	R2 Indicator Analysis using the Optimal Distributions of Solutions for R2 and Other Indicators	Yang Nan (Southern University of Science and Technology), Hisao Ishibuchi (Southern University of Science and Technology), Tianye Shu (Southern University of Science and Technology), Ke Shang (National Engineering Laboratory for Big Data System Computing Technology)
ENUM	Challenges of Interaction in Optimizing Mixed Categorical-Continuous Variables	Youhei Akimoto (University of Tsukuba, RIKEN AIP), Xilin Gao (University of Tsukuba), Ze Kai Ng (University of Tsukuba), Daiki Morinaga (University of Tsukuba, RIKEN AIP)
ENUM	CatCMA with Margin: Stochastic Optimization for Continuous, Integer, and Categorical Variables	Ryoki Hamano (CyberAgent), Masahiro Nomura (CyberAgent), Shota Saito (Yokohama National University, SKILLUP NeXt Ltd.), Kento Uchida (Yokohama National University), Shinichi Shirakawa (Yokohama National University)
GA	Empirical Linkage Learning Provably Builds Truthful Models on Concatenated Traps and H-IFF	Marcus Schmidbauer (University of Passau), Dirk Sudholt (University of Passau)
GECH	Augmented Decision Spaces for Stackelberg Security Games: Sparse evolution begets scalability	Adam Żychowski (Warsaw University of Technology), Abhishek Gupta (Indian Institute Of Technology Goa), Yew Soon Ong (Nanyang Technological University), Jacek Mańdziuk (Warsaw University of Technology, AGH University of Krakow)
GP	An Online Genetic Programming Approach to Dynamic Production Scheduling	Binh Tran (La Trobe University), Su Nguyen (RMIT University)
GP	Quality Diversity Genetic Programming for Learning Scheduling Heuristics	Meng Xu (Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (ASTAR)), Frank Neumann (The University of Adelaide), Aneta Neumann (The University of Adelaide), Yew Soon Ong (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (ASTAR))
GP	Transformer Semantic Genetic Programming for Symbolic Regression	Philipp Anthes (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität), Dominik Sobania (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität), Franz Rothlauf (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität)
L4EC	The Pitfalls of Benchmarking in Algorithm Selection: What We Are Getting Wrong	Gašper Petelin (Jozef Stefan Institute, Jožef Stefan International Postgraduate School), Gjorgjina Cenikj (Jozef Stefan Institute, Jožef Stefan International Postgraduate School)
L4EC	On the Importance of Reward Design in Reinforcement Learning-based Dynamic Algorithm Configuration: A Case Study on OneMax with (1+($lambda$,$lambda$))-GA	Tai Nguyen (University of St Andrews, Sorbonne University), Phong Le (University of St Andrews), André Biedenkapp (University of Freiburg), Carola Doerr (CNRS, Sorbonne University), Nguyen Dang (University of St Andrews)
L4EC	Deep reinforcement learning for instance-specific algorithm configuration	Elias Schede (Bielefeld University), Moritz Seiler (University of Paderborn), Kevin Tierney (Bielefeld University), Heike Trautmann (University of Paderborn)
NE	Evolving Comprehensive Proxies for Zero-Shot Neural Architecture Search	Junhao Huang (Victoria University of Wellington), Bing Xue (Victoria University of Wellington), Yanan Sun (Sichuan University), Mengjie Zhang (Victoria University of Wellington)
NE	Competition and Attraction Improve Model Fusion	João Abrantes (Sakana AI), Robert Tjarko Lange (Sakana AI), Yujin Tang (Sakana AI)
NE	Visualizing the Dynamics of Neuroevolution with Genetic Distance Projections	Evan Hayden Patterson (Rochester Institute of Technology), Joshua Karns (Rochester Institute of Technology), Zimeng Lyu (Rochester Institute of Technology), Travis Desell (Rochester Institute of Technology)
RWA	Sequence Optimization of Multispacecraft Multitarget Rendezvous Missions with a Coevolutionary Algorithm	Yu Zhang (National University of Defense Technology, National Key Laboratory of Space System Operation and Control), Yuehe Zhu (National University of Defense Technology, National Key Laboratory of Space System Operation and Control), Jiacheng Zhang (National University of Defense Technology, National Key Laboratory of Space System Operation and Control), Yazhong Luo (National University of Defense Technology, National Key Laboratory of Space System Operation and Control)
RWA	Tomographic Reconstruction with Real-time a priori Acquistion	Muhammad Wishal Khan (University of Greenwich), Hooman Oroojeni (University of Greenwich), Bal Sanghera (Barts Health NHS Trust), Tim Blackwell (Goldsmiths University), Mohammad Majid al-Rifaie (University of Greenwich)
RWA	Differential Evolution for Infeasible Circumstances in Network-Assisted Full-Duplex Cell-Free Massive MIMO	Trinh Van Chien (Hanoi University of Science and Technology), Bui Trong Duc (Hanoi University of Science and Technology), Mohammadali Mohammadi (Queen's University Belfast), Hien Quoc Ngo (Queen's University Belfast), Michail Matthaiou (Queen's University Belfast)
SI	Congestion-Aware Multi-Agent Path Planning for Pick-up and Delivery Tasks	Mehrdad Asadi (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Ann Nowé (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Javad Ghofrani (University of Luebeck)
THEORY	Improved Runtime Analysis of a Multi-Valued Compact Genetic Algorithm on Two Generalized OneMax Problems	Sumit Adak (Technical University of Denmark), Carsten Witt (Technical University of Denmark)
THEORY	Why Dominance Is Not Enough: Lessons from Practical Evolutionary Multi-Objective Algorithms	Duc-Cuong Dang (University of Passau), Andre Opris (University of Passau), Dirk Sudholt (University of Passau)