Frank Neumann

Frank Neumann serves as Professor and leader of the Optimisation and Logistics group at the University of Adelaide, where he has established himself as a pioneering researcher in evolutionary computation and AI-based optimization. His position is funded by the Australian Research Council through a Future Fellowship, focusing on optimization methods for problems with stochastic constraints. As an internationally recognized scholar with over 11,000 citations, his research spans theoretical aspects of evolutionary computation and practical applications in cybersecurity, renewable energy, logistics, and mining. His leadership in the field includes serving as general chair of ACM GECCO 2016 and co-organizing ACM FOGA 2013 in Adelaide, while maintaining roles as Associate Editor for "Evolutionary Computation" and ACM Transactions on Evolutionary Learning and Optimization. His approach to optimization problems emphasizes diversity in solution sets, developing innovative algorithms that can produce multiple high-quality solutions rather than single outcomes. Through his work at Adelaide's School of Computer Science, he continues to advance the field of evolutionary computation while supervising PhD projects in AI-based optimization, though notably taking a strong stance against "novel" metaphor-based algorithms that he considers detrimental to scientific progress.