GECCO

It is my pleasure to welcome you to Philadelphia for the 2012 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2012). This is the first time GECCO has been held in Philly. We very much you hope you enjoy this historic American city and all it has to offer.

This will be my 14th year attending GECCO. I have contributed a number of papers and have enjoyed many thought-provoking presentations over the years. GECCO has played a very important role in my research program and in the training of many of my students and postdocs. I agreed to serve as General Chair of GECCO-2012 because it was time to give back to the community I have enjoyed being a part of since 1999.

Terence Soule served as the editor-in-chief this year and did a very skillful job maintaining the high quality of the conference. GECCO-2012 accepted 172 full papers for oral presentation out of a total of 467 submitted. This is an acceptance rate of less than 37%. I am very thankful to Terry, Anne Auger, our Proceedings Chair, and all the track chairs for their hard work managing the review, selection and scheduling process for the scientific papers.

One of the highlights of every GECCO is the free tutorials and the free workshops held during the first two days of the conference. I found these to be incredibly helpful when I was still learning about the field.