On behalf of the organizing committee, it is our great pleasure to invite you to the bi-annual IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (IEEE WCCI) which will be held in the magnificent city of Vancouver, Canada, 24-29 July 2016. Financially sponsored by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS), IEEE WCCI 2016 will host three conferences: The 2016 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2016), the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE 2016), and the 2016 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (IEEE CEC 2016) under one roof.

Since the first WCCI taking place in Orlando in 1994, this Congress series and the computational intelligence community have progressed tremendously. The IEEE WCCI 2016 received a record number of 3,015 paper submissions with more than 1,800 registrations from over 70 countries. The highlights of the Congress include,

• 5 Keynotes by top-notch researchers - Leslie Valiant, Ronald R. Yager, Marco Dorigo, Ricardo Baeza-Yates and Charles C. Ragin;
• 15 Plenary speeches by world-renown scholars on pertinent and captivating topics within the technical scope of each conference;
• A public lecture by David B. Fogel on the topic of “Fun and Games with Artificial Intelligence”;
• 6 valuable and engaging panel sessions by revered researchers within the field of computational intelligence, including a panel session on “Turning Big Data Challenges into Opportunities”, memorial sessions of David Casasent and Walter J. Freeman;
• 24 free tutorials covering a diverse range of topics offering a unique opportunity to disseminate in-depth information on specific topics in computational intelligence;
• 4 workshops to stimulate discussions between participants on active and emerging topics of computational intelligence, including a workshop on “Key Challenges and Future Directions of Evolutionary Computation”;
• 175 special sessions organized by domain experts that are encompassed within the technical scope of the conference;
• 10 challenging and contemporary competitions offering distinctive topics in each track to cater to every participant's needs. In particular, human vs. computer Go demonstration games will be held during the IEEE WCCI 2016. Applied with deep learning technologies, a few top computer Go programs including Zen (Japan), DarkForest (Facebook / USA), and CGI (Taiwan), are invited to compete with world-class professional Go players in the games.

The IEEE WCCI 2016 will be held at the Vancouver Convention Centre, Vancouver, Canada. Vancouver is Canada’s Pacific gem, offering a winning combination of world-class hotels, meeting venues, and restaurants in a setting of spectacular beauty. Few convention cities can offer such a wide range of cosmopolitan amenities in a downtown core that is safe, clean, pedestrian friendly, and stunning in its backdrop of mountains and ocean.

Apart from the technical programs, participants are also cordially invited to attend various social events, such as welcome reception, award banquet, students and young professionals reception, women in computational intelligence reception, IEEE CIS chapters forum etc. In addition, participants are also encouraged to explore the beautiful city of Vancouver which has an endless supply of attractions and things to see and do.

Do not miss the annual musical fireworks competition held over English Bay in Vancouver – 2016 Honda Celebration of Light (Competition begins at 10PM each night on the following dates: Saturday, July 23 - Royal Fireworks representing Netherlands; Wednesday, July 27 - representing Australia; Saturday, July 30 - Walt Disney representing United States. The musical headliner is Loverboy.)!

We look forward to welcoming you in Vancouver in July 2016!

Special session proposals are invited to the 2016 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence. Special session proposals should include the title, aim and scope (including a list of main topics), and the names of the organizers of the special session, together with a short biography of all organizers. A list of potential contributors will be very helpful.

Special session proposals will be evaluated based on the timeliness, uniqueness of the topic and qualifications of the proposers. The proposers are expected to have a PhD degree and have a good publication track record in the proposed area. After review, a decision on whether the proposal will be provisionally accepted will be sent to the proposers within two weeks after receipt of the proposals. Provisionally accepted special sessions will be listed on the website. However, it is likely that a provisionally accepted proposal will be combined with another one to avoid multiple special sessions covering a similar topic.

Manuscripts submitted to special sessions should be done through the paper submission website of IEEE WCCI 2016. It is the responsibility of the special session organizers to make sure that papers submitted to their special session clearly indicate the name of the special session the paper belongs to. All papers submitted to special sessions will be subject to the same peer-review procedure as the regular papers. Special sessions having fewer than four accepted papers will be cancelled and the accepted papers will be moved to regular sessions.

All special sessions proposals should be submitted to the following Special Sessions Chairs:

Dr. Zhi-Hua Zhou (For neural networks and learning systems related topics, hybrid of neural networks, learning systems and computational intelligence technologies). Papers submitted to this special session track (if accepted and presented) will be published in the IJCNN proceedings.

Dr. Uzay Kaymak (For fuzzy systems related topics, hybrid of fuzzy systems and computational intelligence technologies). Papers submitted to this special session track (if accepted and presented) will be published in the FUZZ-IEEE proceedings.

Dr. Mengjie Zhang (For evolutionary computation related topics, hybrid of evolutionary computation and computational intelligence technologies). Papers submitted to this special session track (if accepted and presented) will be published in the IEEE CEC proceedings.

Dr. Chuan-Kang Ting (For cross-disciplinary and computational intelligence applications). Papers submitted to this cross-disciplinary and CI applications special session track (if accepted and presented) will be published in one of the three conference proceedings (IJCNN, Fuzzy-IEEE, or IEEE CEC) that is most appropriate to the papers. Such decision will be made by the Special Session Organizers in consultation with the Special Session Chair and one of the three Conference Chairs.

The IEEE WCCI 2016 special sessions proposal submission deadline is 15 November 2015.

Click here for more information!

The IEEE WCCI 2016 solicits proposals for tutorials aimed at researchers, students and practicing professionals. Tutorials will be held on 24 July 2016. Traditionally, tutorials attract a broad range of audiences, including professionals, researchers from academia, students, and practitioners, who wish to enhance their knowledge in the selected tutorial topic. Tutorials offer a unique opportunity to disseminate in-depth information on specific topics in computational intelligence. Tutorials will cover fundamental areas in:

• Evolutionary computation,
• Neural networks and learning systems,
• Fuzzy systems, soft computing, and related areas, and
• Advanced topics and applications in computational intelligence.

Tutorials will be organized by scientists or professionals who have significant expertise in the selected topic and whose recent work has had a significant impact in their field. The format of each tutorial will be up to the organizer(s), but the focus should be on well-organized, systematic presentations of didactic value. Tutorial organizers should prepare various materials including handouts or electronic resources that will be made available for distribution before or during the tutorial. Setting up specific web pages for tutorials by tutorial organizers is highly encouraged. Tutorials will be typically of 1.5 hours duration; proposals for 3 hours, or full-day tutorial will be considered, if the justification deems sufficient for the extended presence. The audience size of an average tutorial is expected to be around 25-50. Organizers of successful tutorials may receive some minor compensation, the details of which will be communicated later.

If you are interested in proposing a tutorial, would like to recommend someone who might be interested, or have questions about tutorials, please contact one of the Tutorials Co-Chairs most appropriate to your topic (and copy your email to other Tutorials Co-Chairs):

Dr. Nikola Kasabov (Neural Networks and Learning Systems)

Dr. Hani Hagras (Fuzzy Logic and Systems),

Dr. Kalyanmoy Deb (Evolutionary Computation),

Tutorial proposals must be submitted electronically by 15 December 2015 to one of the tutorial chairs. Early submission is encouraged. The proposal should be brief, max 3-4 pages, including the description of the goal of the proposed tutorial, outline of the covered material and the proposed format. The justification should include the potential audience and the timeliness of the given tutorial, proposed duration, as well as the qualifications of the proposer(s).

IEEE WCCI 2016 Tutorial Schedule

IEEE WCCI 2016 Tutorials will be held at the Vancouver Convention Centre (West Building) on Sunday, 24 July 2016. It is free of charge for registered participants of the Congress.

Location	Room 202	Room 203	Room 204	Room 205	Room 206	Room 207	Room 208-9	Room 215-6
8:30 - 9:00 am	Coffee Break
9:00 - 11:00 am	IJCNN-3	IJCNN -4	IJCNN -5	FUZZ -3	FUZZ -4	FUZZ -5	CEC -1	CEC -2
	Learning from Unstructured Data Streams in Cybersecurity	Learning in Non-Stationary Environments	Physics of the Mind	Type-2 Fuzzy Ontology and Fuzzy Markup Language for Real-World Applications	A Sum-of-Squares Framework for Fuzzy Systems Modelling and Control:Beyond Linear Matrix Inequalities	Type-2 Fuzzy Sets and Systems	Meta-heuristics for Multi-objective Optimization	Applying Evolutionary Computation in Industrial Practice
11:00 - 12:30 pm	Lunch Break (On Your Own)
12:30 - 2:30 pm	IJCNN-6	IJCNN -8	IJCNN -7	CEC -3	CEC -4	CEC -5	FUZZ -2	FUZZ -7
	Passive and Active Control for a Lower-limb Rehablitation Robot	Multiview Learning	Patent Citation Network Analysis	Automatic Algorithm Configuration: Methods, Applications and Perspectives	Advances in Particle Swarm Optimization	Search Based Software Engineering: Foundations, Recent Advances, Challenges and Future Research Directions	Fuzzy Logic and Machine Learning: A Tutorial	Dynamic Fuzzy Neural Networks: Architectures, Algorithms and Applications
2:30 - 3:00 pm	Coffee Break
3:00 - 5:00 pm	CEC -6	CEC -8	CEC -7	FUZZ -1a	FUZZ -6a	IJCNN -9	IJCNN -2	IJCNN -1
	Differential Evolution with Ensembles and Topologies	Theory of Evolutionary Algorithms	Niching Methods for Multimodal Optimization	Big Data: Technologies and Computational Intelligence Approaches	Computer Vision: A Computational Intelligence Perspective	Application of Graphs and Network Theory for the Interpretation of Brain Imaging Data	Spiking Neural Networks: The Machine Learning Approach	Data Stram Mining
5:00 - 6:30 pm				FUZZ -1b	FUZZ -6b
				Big Data: Technologies and Computational Intelligence Approaches	Computer Vision: A Computational Intelligence Perspective

Due to free tutorials, number of seats for each tutorial will be limited to its capacity. They will be given at the first come first take basis. Please arrive early to assure a seat.

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Prospective competition organizers are invited to submit their proposals to the Competitions Chair, Dr. Chang-Shing Lee and Dr. Simon M. Lucas by 15 December 2015. A common website for all accepted competitions will be provided on the congress website at www.wcci2016.org, for which a link to the homepage of each competition maintained by their organizers independently will be provided.

Each proposal should contain the following information:

1. Competition Outline

Please describe the competition outline, including competition goals and rules, contributions to the computational intelligence community and/or the society, how to submit an entry and how to evaluate them, expected number of entries, and URL to the competition home page, if any.

2. Competition Category

Please select the competition category from below. In case you have other requirements, please also elaborate them:

Category A: You plan also to organize an associated special session, whose proposal must be submitted separately to the Special Session Chairs. In addition, you require that each team must submit at least one paper to the special session. Since competition results are usually announced at such special sessions, we will not allocate extra time slots, for all competitions of this category, in the congress program.

Category B: You plan also to organize an associated special session, whose proposal must be submitted separately to the Special Session Chairs. However, submission of papers to the special session by competition participants is not mandatory. In this category, we will allocate some time slots as competition sessions in the congress program where competition results will be announced and oral presentations about submitted entries will be conducted.

Category C: You have no plan to organize an associated special session. In this category, competition sessions will be allocated in the congress program, where competition results will be announced and oral presentations about submitted entries will be conducted.

Note: For categories B and C, please note that congress participation is required for each entry.

3. Sponsorship

While IEEE WCCI 2016 will try to arrange for a winning certificate and prize to be given to the winner of each competition who attends the congress, we strongly encourage competition organizers to find any sponsorships for their competitions. Please elaborate any plan on this matter.

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The IEEE WCCI 2016 organizing committee invites proposals for workshops to be held in conjunction with the main event. The overall purpose of a workshop is to provide participants with the opportunity to present and discuss novel research ideas on active and emerging topics of Computational Intelligence. Topics of the proposed workshops should therefore be aligned with those set forth in the call for papers for the main event. We strongly encourage the workshop organizers to make their workshops highly interactive, and include discussions, Q& A and panel sessions to facilitate a lively exchange of ideas among the attendees.

Workshops can take on a number of forms including but not limited to being organized around emerging research areas, challenging problems and industrial applications. Organizers of accepted workshops are expected to prepare a workshop website and call for papers, publicize the workshop, gather submissions, conduct the reviewing process and decide upon the final workshop program. They must also prepare an informal set of workshop proceedings to be distributed with the registration materials at the conference. They may choose to form organizing or program committees for assistance in these tasks.

Proposal Details

Proposals are limited to no more than five pages and should contain the following information:

• Organizers (names, affiliations and email addresses; identify one person as the primary contact person)
• Description of the workshop: abstract, objectives, goals, relevance to IEEE WCCI, and expected outcomes
• Motivation for why a IEEE WCCI workshop on this topic is needed
• Description of target audience and estimated number of participants
• Workshop duration, format, activities, and schedule
• List of committed program committee members
• Preliminary list of invited speakers (if any)
• Short biographical sketch for each organizer, describing relevant qualifications and experience

If this workshop has been held previously, then the organizers should indicate this and describe briefly past attendance and outcomes, and why another workshop is needed. Prospective workshop organizers are invited to submit their proposals to the Workshops Chair, Dr. Piero P. Bonissone, by 15 November 2015.

Proposal Evaluation Criteria

All workshop proposals will be reviewed based on the following considerations:

• Relevance of the workshop to the scope of the main event and concerns a coherent and important technical topic of high interest in the community
• Novel with respect to other forums, especially with respect to other IEEE WCCI 2016 workshops
• Likely impact on the target community, including likely high participation
• One of the best ways to show likely interest is to have a strong set of researchers who have agreed to serve on the PC

Click here for more information!