Third edition of the PhD ELT Course “Evolutionary Multi-Criteria Optimisation and Decision-Making”
Last week the third edition of the course ‘Evolutionary Multi-Criteria Optimisation and Decision-Making’ took place at the Department of Energy of Politecnico di Milano. The course was part of the PhD Program in Electrical Engineering and it was held by Prof. Kalyanmoy Deb, one of the leading international experts in the field of evolutionary optimisation and multi-objective decision-making, who shared his knowledge and expertise with our PhD students.
Kalyanmoy Deb is a professor at Michigan State University (USA) in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is also a professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. He is director of the Computational Optimisation and Innovation (COIN) Laboratory and previously founded and directed the Kanpur Genetic Algorithms Laboratory (KanGAL) at the Indian Institute of Technology di Kanpur, India.
The course covered the foundational concepts and practical aspects of solving problems with multiple objectives, engaging participants with topics such as:
– Principles of multi-objective optimisation;
– An introduction to evolutionary algorithms, including NSGA-II and NSGA-III.
– Approaches to multi-criterion decision-making.
– Applications in various scientific and engineering domains.
In particular, the course introduced the basics of optimization, classical methods, and recent evolutionary optimization approaches in a systematic way, complemented by hands-on exercises. After establishing the foundations of single-objective optimization methods, the basics and methods of multi-criterion search and optimization were also analyzed, with a focus on evolutionary approaches, known as EMO methods. Thereafter, the selection of a single Pareto-optimal solution using classical and evolutionary multi-criterion decision-making (MCDM) methods was introduced. Finally, several advanced research topics were presented to provide students with new and innovative potential research ideas.
This course offered an important opportunity for the growth of our PhD students, who will now be able to apply the skills acquired to their research work. The Department of Energy gratefully acknowledges Prof. Kalyanmoy Deb for his valuable contribution and for sharing his expertise.
