• Dr.-Ing. Dr. Sc. h.c. Hans-Paul Schwefel
    Professor emeritus of computer science
    born 4 December 1940 in Berlin
    Phone: 0231/755-7703 or -7701
    Fax: 0231/755-7740
    E-mail: hps@uDo.edu
    W3: http://Ls11-www.cs.uni-dortmund.de/people/schwefel

  • Alumus of the TU Berlin, the Faculty for Computer Science of the TU Dortmund, and The University of Birmingham

  • Education

    1959 matriculation, Canisius College, Berlin
    1965 diploma in engineering (aero- and space technology), Technical University of Berlin (TUB), title of diploma thesis: Kybernetische Evolution als Strategie der experimentellen Forschung in der Strömungstechnik (in English: Cybernetic evolution as experimental research strategy in fluid mechanics)
    1975 Dr.-Ing. graduation in process engineering, TUB, title of doctoral thesis: Evolutionsstrategie und numerische Optimierung (in English: Evolutionary strategy and numerical optimization)
    1985 tenured full university professor (chair of Systems Analysis), University of Dortmund, Dept. of Comp. Sci.

  • Appointments

    1963-1965 junior assistant at the Hermann-Föttinger Institute for Hydrodynamics (HFI), TUB

    1965-1966 research assistant at the HFI-TUB
    subject: wall shear stress measurement techniques in turbulent flows, grant from the German Research Federation (DFG)

    1967-1970 R&D engineer, AEG Research Centre Berlin
    subject: liquid metal MHD energy conversion, basic research in flashing nozzle flow dynamics, later on responsible for the construction of a large liquid metal test facility

    1970-1975 grantee of the DFG at different institutes of the TUB
    subject: development and analysis of experimental and numerical optimization strategies, gleaned from organic evolution

    1976 research consultant for a DFG project at the medical school of the University of Hanover
    subject: analysis of the non-genetic variance among cloned animals

    1976-1984 senior research fellow at the Nuclear Research Centre (KFA) Jülich, programme group of Systems Analysis and Technological Development (STE)
    subject: national and international energy system modelling for the European Communities (EC) and the German government (BMWi - ministry of economic affairs)
    later on head of the department for computer aided planning methods (REPLAN)
    subject: development of software tools for integrated interactive data analysis, dynamic simulation, and superimposed optimization

    1985-2006 holder of the chair for Systems Analysis at the University of Dortmund (UniDo), Department of Computer Science (Informatik)
    deputy dean in 1989 and dean of the faculty 1990-1992
    1989-2006 member of the board of trustees of the Informatik Centrum Dortmund (ICD) (president from 1989 to 2002)
    spokesman of the Collaborative Research Center (SFB 531)for Computational Intelligence 1996-2004
    vice-rector for research and junior scientists of the University of Dortmund 1998-2000
    2003-2005 spokesman of the Transfer Domain TFB 37 Data based generation of models by means of Computational Intelligence methods for solving industrial application problems
    2013-2019 ombudsman for the graduate school "Discrete optimization of technical systems under uncertainty (GRK 1855)"

    since March 2006 professor emeritus

  • Teaching activities

    1978-1984 lectures on Technical Optimization and Evolution Strategies at the TUB, Dept. of Process Engineering

    1985-2006 lectures at the UniDo
    • Systems Analysis
    • Programming (LISP/Scheme)
    • Evolutionary Strategies in Optimization
    • Qualitative Theory of Selforganization
    • Technical Optimization

      seminaries on

    • world modelling
    • systems ecology
    • stochastic search processes
    • models of evolution
    • adaptive learning
    • theory and applications of GA and ES
    • computational intelligence
    • metaheuristics

      supervisor of

    • several project groups (12 students, one year each)
    • more than 170 diploma theses
    • 24 dissertations, 2 habilitations (venia legendi)
    guest lectures 1988-2008
    • 'Systems Analysis at the Interface of Engineering and Economics', Dalian University of Technology, China
    • 'Evolution Strategies', Technical University of Ilmenau, GDR
    • 'Introduction to Systems Analysis', Technical University of Tianjin, China
    • 'Software Tools for Instrumental Systems Analysis', University of Tehran, Iran
    • 'Evolutionary Algorithms', La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia
    • 'Evolutionary Computation', University of Patras, Greece
    • 'Evolutionary Optimisation', University of Ulster Magee Campus, Derry/Londonderry, Ulster, UK

  • Books and Proceedings

    H.-P. Schwefel: Numerische Optimierung von Computer-Modellen, Birkhäuser, Basle, 1977 [identical to dissertation 1974/75]

    H.-P. Schwefel: Numerical Optimization of Computer Models, Wiley, Chichester, 1981 [translation of dissertation plus extra paragraph on correlated mutations along a research report of 1975]

    H.-M. Voigt, H. Mühlenbein, and H.-P. Schwefel (Eds.): Evolution and Optimization, Proceedings of the Wartburg workshop in 1989, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin, 1990

    H.-P. Schwefel and R. Männer (Eds.): Parallel Problem Solving from Nature - PPSN I, Proceedings of the first PPSN workshop at Dortmund in 1990, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1991, vol. 496 of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science

    Y. Davidor, H.-P. Schwefel, and R. Männer (Eds.): Parallel Problem Solving from Nature, PPSN III, Proceedings of the third PPSN conference at Jerusalem in Oct. 1994, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1994, vol. 866 of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science

    H.-P. Schwefel: Evolution and Optimum Seeking, Wiley, New York, 1995 [revised and slightly enlarged edition of the Wiley 1981 book above]

    V. Claus, J. Hopf, and H.-P. Schwefel (Eds.): Evolutionary Algorithms and their Application, Dagstuhl Seminar-Report No. 140, March 1996

    H.-M. Voigt, W. Ebeling, I. Rechenberg, and H.-P. Schwefel (Eds.): Parallel Problem Solving from Nature - PPSN IV, Proceedings of the fourth conference at Berlin in September 1996, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1996, Vol. 1141 of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science

    S. Hafner, H. Kiendl, and H.-P. Schwefel (Hrsg.): Computational Intelligence - Neuronale Netze, Evolutionäre Algorithmen, Fuzzy Control im industriellen Einsatz, VDI Berichte 1381, VDI Verlag, Düsseldorf, 1998

    A.E. Eiben, Th. Bäck, M. Schoenauer, and H.-P. Schwefel (Eds.): Parallel Problem Solving from Nature - PPSN V, Proceedings of the fifth conference at Amsterdam in September 1998, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1998, Vol. 1498 of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science

    D.B. Fogel, H.-P. Schwefel, Th. Bäck, and X. Yao (Eds.): Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE Conference on Evolutionary Computation at Anchorage AK in May 1998 (as part of the Second IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI'98)), IEEE Press, Piscataway NJ, 1998

    S. Hafner, H. Kiendl, R. Kruse, and H.-P. Schwefel (Hrsg.): Computational Intelligence im industriellen Einsatz, VDI Berichte 1526, VDI Verlag, Düsseldorf, 2000

    M. Schoenauer, K. Deb, G. Rudolph, X. Yao, E. Lutton, J.J. Merelo, and H.-P. Schwefel (Eds.): Parallel Problem Solving from Nature - PPSN VI, Proceedings of the sixth conference at Paris in September 2000, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2000, Vol. 1917 of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science

    J.J. Merelo Guervos, P. Adamidis, H.-G. Beyer, J.-L. Fernandez-Villacanas, H.-P. Schwefel (Eds.): Parallel Problem Solving from Nature - PPSN VII, Proceedings of the seventh conference at Granada in September 2002, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2002, Vol. 2439 of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science

    H.-P. Schwefel, I. Wegener, K. Weinert (Eds.): Advances in Computational Intelligence - Theory and Practice, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2003, Natural Computing Series

    X. Yao, E. Burke, J.A. Lozano, J. Smith, J.J. Merelo-Guervos, J.A. Bullinaria, J. Rowe, P. Tino, A. Kaban, H.-P. Schwefel (Eds.): Parallel Problem Solving from Nature - PPSN VIII, Proceedings of the eigth conference at Birmingham, UK, in September 2004, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2004, Vol. 3242 of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science

  • Honorary / advisory conference chairs

    2002 Singapore, 4th Asia-Pacific Conf. on Simulated Evolution and Learning (SEAL)
    2008 Londonderry, Summer School on Evolutionary Computing
    2008 Dortmund, 10th Int'l Conf. on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN X)
    2010 Krakow, 11th Int'l Conf. on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN XI)
    2010 Kanpur, 10th Int'l Conf. onSimulated Evolution and Learning (SEAL)
    2011 New Orleans, IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC)

  • Honours etc.

    VDI (Verein Deutscher Ingenieure) prize for best students of the Technical University of Berlin (TUB), 1965
    co-inventor of a cooled inverse flashing nozzle, AEG, 1970
    grantee of the German Research Foundation (DFG), 1971-1975
    Doctorate 'summa cum laude', TUB, 1975
    elected speaker of the scientific staff, KFA-STE, 1982-1984
    member of the scientific council of the Nuclear Research Centre (KFA) Jülich, 1983-1984
    member of the German association for the advancement of the IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis at Laxenburg, Austria - founded by members of the Club of Rome), since 1987
    member of the editorial boards of the international journals and book series
    - Evolutionary Computation 1993 - 2004 (MIT Press); since 2005 member of the Advisory Board
    - BioSystems 1994 - 2001 (Elsevier)
    - Transactions on Evolutionary Computation 1997 - (IEEE)
    - Natural Computing 2002 - (Kluwer Academic Publ./now Springer Science+Business Media)
    - book series Advances in Natural Computation 2004 - (World Scientific Publ.)
    member of the PPSN steering committee (conference series on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature), since foundation in 1993; honorary member since 2005
    lifetime achievement award from and honorary member of the Evolutionary Programming Society, La Jolla CA, 1995
    elected member of the ISGA Council (International Society for Genetic Algorithms), 1995 - 2001
    advisory board member for the Handbook of Evolutionary Computation
    advisory board member for the Leiden Center for Natural Computing (LCNC) at the Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden, The Netherlands, 1998
    advisory board member for the book series on Natural Computing of the Springer-Verlag, 1999
    evolutionary computation pioneer award from the IEEE Neural Networks Society (NNS) [renamed in 2004: IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS)], 2002
    member of the Study Group Structure Evolution and Innovation of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, since 2002
    member of the scientific board of The Centre of Excellence for Research in Computational Intelligence and Applications (CERCIA) at The University of Birmingham, UK, 2003
    elected senior fellow of the International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (ISGEC), 2003
    honorary degree of Doctor of Science from The University of Birmingham, UK, December 13th, 2007
    IEEE Frank Rosenblatt Award "for pioneering contributions to evolutionary computation through the theory and application of evolution strategies" from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), June 7th, 2011; laudatio

  • Memberships

    The (German) Association of Engineers (VDI), since the Sixties (with a break)
    Swiss Society for Futures Research (SZF), 1982-2005
    German Association of High School Teachers (DHV), 1983-2005
    Society of the Friends of the University of Dortmund, since 1985
    International Society on Multiple Criteria Decision Making, since 1988
    German Interest Group on Biomathematics (subgroup of the European Society for Mathematical and Theoretical Biology ESMTB), 1989-2005
    Society for Technical Biology and Bionics (GTBB), since 1990
    Working Group on Soft Computing in Northern Germany (AFN), 1993-2004
    VDI/VDE-GMA Special Section 5.21 on Neural Nets and Evolutionary Algorithms [in 2005 restructured as Special Section 5.14 on Computational Intelligence], since 1996
    The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), since 1997, Senior Member since 2005, Fellow since 2007 "for contributions to evolutionary computation"
    Euroscience, A European Association for the Promotion of Science and Technology, 1998 - 2004
    SIGEVO - ACM Special Interest Group for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation, since 2005 [before 2005: International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (ISGEC), since 2003]

  • Avocations

    evolution and optimization, parallel machine learning, collective artificial life, self-organization, evolutionary economics, theoretical ecology, cybernetics, bionics, synergetics, chaotics and fractals, epistemology, general systems science, futures research