Plenary Lecture

Opposition-Based Computation

Assistant Prof. Shahryar Rahnamayan
University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT)
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Oshawa, ON,
CANADA

Email: Shahryar.Rahnamayan@uoit.ca
Website: http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~s2rahnam/

Abstract: Footprints of the opposition concept can be observed in many areas around us. But it has sometimes been known by different names. Opposite particles in physics, complement of an event in probability, absolute or relative complement in set theory, and theses and antitheses in dialectic just are some examples to mention. But for the first time, recently, Opposition-Based Learning (OBL) was proposed and then the opposition-based approaches have been introduced in different artificial intelligence areas. All of them have tried to enhance searching or leaning process by utilizing the opposition concept. Opposition-based evolutionary algorithms, opposition-based neural networks, and also opposition-based reinforcement learning are some efforts in this direction. The main idea behind OBL is the simultaneous consideration of a candidate and its corresponding opposite candidate in order to achieve a better approximation for the current solution. This lecture will introduce Opposition-Based Computation (OBC) in general and also its possible variant applications in soft computing techniques.


Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Dr. Shahryar Rahnamayan received his B.Sc. and M.S. degrees both with honors in software engineering from Shahid Beheshti University, Iran. In 2007, he received his Ph.D. degree in the field of evolutionary computation from University of Waterloo (UW), Canada. The opposition-based differential evolution (ODE) was proposed in his PhD thesis. Since August 2007, he has been a chief research manager at OMISA Inc. (Omni-Modality Intelligent Segmentation Assistant); a company which develops innovative software for medical image segmantation. Before joining to faculty of engineering and applied science, University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), Canada, as a faculty member, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Simon Fraser University (SFU), Canada. His research includes evolutionary algorithms, image processing, and opposition-based computation. Dr. Shahryar was awarded the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS), President’s Graduate Scholarship (PGS), NSERC’s Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Fellowship, NSERC’s Industrial R&D Fellowship (IRDF), NSERC’s Visiting Fellowship in Canadian Government Laboratories (VF), and the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) Fellowship for two times.