Keynote Speakers

We are pleased to announce that the following speakers will give keynote presentations at the symposium.






Keynote Abstracts:

Riccardo Poli: Is There a Free Lunch for Human and Search-Based Software Engineering?

Informally speaking, the no-free-lunch theory (NFL) originally proposed by Wolpert and Macready states that, when evaluated over all possible problems, all search algorithms are equally good or bad irrespective of our evaluation criteria. In the last 15 years there has been a lot of debate about the consequences of NFL.

In this talk I will first review previous key results on NFL. Then I will present some recent results about the inapplicability of NFL to program and function induction. Finally, I will consider to what extent search-based software engineering (SBSE), computer scientists working on SBSE and human programmers are constrained by NFL.

Paolo Tonella: Better Together: Hybridized Search Based Techniques

Search based software engineering is not necessarily going to replace existing heuristics and solutions to software engineering problems. In fact, the search based framework is flexible enough to allow for smooth integration with several of the existing techniques. Hence, hybridization of search based algorithms with available methods has the potential of a win-win alliance, where the strengths of the various approaches get amplified by the union. Future research in search based software engineering should investigate in depth the challenging opportunities offered by such hybridization.