Auburn professor delivers two international keynote conference addresses

Published: Dec 1, 2020 7:55 AM

By Cassie Montgomery

Alice Smith, the Joe W. Forehand/Accenture Distinguished Professor of industrial and systems engineering with a joint appointment in computer science and software engineering, recently presented two keynote addresses at international conferences: “System Optimization, Adaptability to Dynamic Environments, Robustness and Flexibility” at the 2020 CEIINS Congress and “Nature-inspired Analytical Approaches for Engineering Systems” at the Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

The overall theme of the presentations was design optimization inspired by elements in nature, a thesis she has studied extensively in her research. Specifically, Smith highlighted general purpose and high-profile paradigms including neural networks, fuzzy logic and swarm and evolutionary metaheuristics.

“I greatly enjoyed presenting at both of these virtual conferences. It was particularly exciting to present to a conference of Australians, as it is so far away and I have never visited there,” she said. “They were very interested in my work and the keynote session generated a lot of questions which I answered live through their video conference system. They have promised to invite me in person after the pandemic, so that is something to look forward to!” 

The 2020 CEIINS Congress was hosted by the Catholic University of Chile located in Santiago, Chile and sponsored by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). CEIINS, the Student Chapter of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the university, is a member chapter of INFORMS. As an international professional society, INFORMS is a community of data science, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence professionals and students from nearly 90 countries. 

The Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence is an annual conference dedicated to fostering research communication and collaboration among the Australasian artificial intelligence community since its inception and hosted by the University of New South Wales in Canberra, Australia. 

Media Contact: Cassie Montgomery, cmontgomery@auburn.edu, 334.844.3668

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