LION19 Scope

The 19th Learning and Intelligent OptimizatioN Conference

June 15–19, 2025, Prague, Czech Republic

NOTE: preliminary website, work in progress

This meeting, which continues the successful series of LION events started 18 years ago (latest editions LION18 @ Ischia, Italy, LION17 @ Nice, France), is exploring the intersections and uncharted territories between machine learning, artificial intelligence, mathematical programming and algorithms for hard optimization problems. The LION Manifesto defines the research area that is relevant for this event.

The main purpose of the venue is to bring together experts from these areas to discuss new ideas and methods, challenges and opportunities in various application areas, general trends and specific developments.

The large variety of heuristic algorithms for hard optimization problems raises numerous interesting and challenging issues. Practitioners are confronted with the burden of selecting the most appropriate method, in many cases through an expensive algorithm configuration and parameter tuning process, and subject to a steep learning curve. Scientists seek theoretical insights and demand a sound experimental methodology for evaluating algorithms and assessing strengths and weaknesses. A necessary prerequisite for this effort is a clear separation between the algorithm and the experimenter, who, in too many cases, is "in the loop" as a crucial intelligent learning component. Both issues are related to designing and engineering ways of "learning" about the performance of different techniques, and ways of using past experience about the algorithm behavior to improve performance in the future. Intelligent learning schemes for mining the knowledge obtained from different runs or during a single run can improve the algorithm development and design process and simplify the applications of high-performance optimization methods. Combinations of algorithms can further improve the robustness and performance of the individual components provided that sufficient knowledge of the relationship between problem instance characteristics and algorithm performance is obtained.

Important dates

All deadlines are Anywhere on Earth (AoE = UTC-12h).

• Submission deadline:, January 31, 2025.
• Author notification:, March 10, 2025.
• Conference at Prague, Czech Republic, June 15–19, 2025.

Invited talks

Proceedings

Papers accepted into the LION19 proceedings will be published in Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS).

Special sessions

In addition to submissions about general LION themes, we also welcome submissions related to one of our special sessions. The special sessions will be part of the regular conference and are subject to the same peer-review as all other submissions.

Program

Organization

General Chairs

Milan Hladik, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

Hossein Moosaei, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

Technical Program Committee Chair

Yingqian Zhang, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands.

Steering Committee

Roberto Battiti (University of Trento, Italy - Head of the Steering Committee)  
Francesco Archetti (Consorzio Milano Ricerche, Italy)  
Christian Blum (Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Spain)  
Mauro Brunato (University of Trento, Italy)  
Carlos A. Coello-Coello (CINVESTAV-IPN, Mexico)  
Clarisse Dhaenens (University of Lille, France)  
Paola Festa (University of Napoli, Italy)  
Martin Charles Golumbic (University of Haifa, Israel)  
Youssef Hamadi (Tempero Tech, France)  
Laetitia Jourdan (University of Lille, France)  
Nikolaos Matsatsinis (Technical University of Crete, Greece)  
Panos Pardalos (University of Florida, USA)  
Mauricio Resende (University of Washington, USA)  
Meinolf Sellmann (InsideOpt, USA)  
Yaroslav Sergeyev (University of Calabria, Italy)  
Dimitris Simos (SBA Research, Austria)  
Thomas Stuetzle (University of Bruxelles, Belgium)  
Kevin Tierney (Bielefeld University, Germany)

Technical Program Committee: (work in progress)

• Carlos Ansòtegui (University of Lleida, Spain)
• Francesco Archetti (Consorzio Milano Ricerche, Italy)
• Annabella Astorino (ICAR-CNR, Italy)
• Hendrik Baier (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands )
• Roberto Battiti (University of Trento, Italy)
• Laurens Bliek (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands )
• Christian Blum (Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Spain)
• Mauro Brunato (University of Trento, Italy)
• Zaharah Bukhsh (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands )
• Sonia Cafieri (Ecole Nationale de l'Aviation Civile, France)
• Antonio Candelieri (University of Milano Bicocca, Italy)
• Zhiguang Cao (Singapore Management University, Singapore)
• Marco Chiarandini (University of Southern Denmark, Denmark)
• John Chinneck (Carleton University, Canada)
• Konstantinos Chatzilygeroudis (University of Patras, Greece)
• Philippe Codognet (JFLI / Sorbonne Universitè, Japan / France)
• Patrick De Causmaecker (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium)
• Renato De Leone (University of Camerino, Italy)
• Clarisse Dhaenens (Université Lille 1 (Polytech Lille, CRIStAL, INRIA), France)
• Luca Di Gaspero (DPIA - University of Udine, Italy)
• Theresa Elbracht (Bielefeld University, Germany)
• Adil Erzin (Sobolev Institute of Mathematics)
• Giovanni Fasano (University Ca'Foscari of Venice, Italy)
• Daniele Ferone (University of Napoli FEDERICO II, Italy)
• Paola Festa (University of Napoli FEDERICO II, Italy)
• Adriana Gabor (Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi)
• Jerome Geyer-Klingeberg (Celones, Germany)
• Isel Grau (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands )
• Vladimir Grishagin (Nizhni Novgorod State University, Russia)
• Mario Guarracino (ICAR-CNR, Italy)
• Francesca Guerriero (University of Calabria, Italy)
• Ioannis Hatzilygeroudis (University of Patras, Greece)
• Youssef Hamadi (Tempero, France)
• Andre Hottung (Bielefeld University, Germany)
• Laetitia Jourdan (INRIA/LIFL/CNRS, France)
• Marie-Eleonore Kessaci (Université de Lille, France)
• Michael Khachay (Krasovsky Institute of Mathematics and Mechanics, Russia)
• Elias B. Khalil (University of Toronto, Canada)
• Yury Kochetov (Sobolev Institute of Mathematics, Russia)
• Ilias Kotsireas (Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada)
• Dmitri Kvasov (DIMES, University of Calabria, Italy)
• Dario Landa-Silva (University of Nottingham, United Kingdom)
• Hoai An Le Thi (Université de Lorraine, France)
• Daniela Lera (University of Cagliari, Italy)
• Yuri Malitsky (FactSet, USA)
• Vittorio Maniezzo (University of Bologna, Italy)
• Silvano Martello (University of Bologna, Italy)
• Yannis Marinakis (Technical University of Crete, Greece)
• Nikolaos Matsatsinis (Technical University of Crete, Greece)
• Laurent Moalic (University of Haute-Alsace - IRIMAS, France)
• Hossein Moosaei (Jan Evangelista Purkyně University, Czech Republic)
• Tatsushi Nishi (Osaka University, Japan)
• Panos Pardalos (University of Florida, USA)
• Axel Parmentier (Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, France)
• Konstantinos Parsopoulos (University of Ioannina, Greece)
• Vincenzo Piuri (Universita' degli Studi of Milano, Italy)
• Oleg Prokopyev (University of Pittsburgh, USA)
• Michael Römer (Bielefeld University, Germany)
• Massimo Roma (SAPIENZA Universita' of Roma, Italy)
• Valeria Ruggiero (University of Ferrara, Italy)
• Frédéric Saubion (University of Angers, France)
• Andrea Schaerf (University of Udine , Italy)
• Elias Schede (Bielefeld University, Germany)
• Marc Schoenauer (INRIA Saclay Île-de-France, France)
• Meinolf Sellmann (InsideOpt, USA)
• Marc Sevaux (Lab-STICC, Université de Bretagne-Sud, France)
• Paul Shaw (IBM, France)
• Dimitris Simos (SBA Research, Austria)
• Thomas Stützle (Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium)
• Tatiana Tchemisova (University of Aveiro, Portugal)
• Kevin Tierney (Bielefeld University, Germany)
• Gerardo Toraldo (Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Italy)
• Paolo Turrini (University of Warwick, UK)
• Michael Vrahatis (University of Patras, Greece)
• Om Prakash Vyas (Indian Institute of Information Technology , India)
• Ranjana Vyas (Indian Institute of Information Technology , India)
• Dimitri Weiß (Bielefeld University, Germany)
• Daniel Wetzel (Bielefeld University, Germany)
• David Winkelmann (Bielefeld University, Germany)
• Dachuan Xu (Beijing University of Technology, Chine)
• Qingfu Zhang (University of Essex & City U of HK, Hong Kong)
• Anatoly Zhigljavsky (Cardiff University, United Kingdom)
• Antanas Zilinskas (Vilnius University, Lithuania)

Location, travel, accommodation

Prague

Contacts