Course Description:

This course is designed for students majoring in science and engineering.  Focused topics include simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, evolution strategies, tabu search, ant colony methods, and particle swarm optimization. Other search methods such as genetic programming, evolutionary programming, and random search methods will be briefly covered. Major emphasis is on NP complete combinatorial problems found in engineering. Issues such as solution encodings, stochastic convergence, selection methods, and local and global search methods are discussed.  Prerequisite:  SSIE 505 or equivalent, and knowledge of at least one programming language.

Course Objectives:

This course is a survey of the newer, most common heuristic search methods. The main techniques will be introduced, discussed critically and variations presented.  Key papers from the literature, including applications, will be used.  Students should gain knowledge of how and why these techniques work, when they should be applied and their relative merits to each other and to more traditional approaches, such as mathematical programming.

Textbook: