Marco Tomassini, Professor Emeritus at HEC Lausanne (University of Lausanne) and an expert in game theory, has just published his book “Metaheuristics: an introduction to metaheuristics for optimization”. Co-authored with Professor Bastien Chopard (University of Geneva), the book is based on the lectures given by the two researchers in their respective institutions. It is aimed at students reaching the end of their Bachelor’s degree or starting their Master’s in computer science and applied computer science, as well as people working in other disciplines, who want to understand the principles of metaheuristics for optimization.
About the book
Published by Presses Universitaires de Perpignan (PUP) in France, the book is aimed, in particular, at readers who want to familiarize themselves with the topic through an academic text illustrated with simple examples. The book is also available in English version (Springer editions).
It addresses the basic principles of metaheuristics and explains the “why and how it works” of traditional metaheuristics (tabu, annealing, ant colony, evolutionary algorithms, etc.). It also discusses the convergence of methods, their performance and phase transitions, as well as the structure of search spaces.
Both authors try to highlight the mechanisms that are common to metaheuristics, focusing primarily on understanding rather than use. They also tackle a number of topics that are not found in other books on this subject, such as performance analysis, phase transitions, the “no free lunch” theorem, firefly algorithms and parallel tempering.
Portrait of Professor Tomassini
Prof. Tomassini has a doctorate in theoretical chemistry. His research covers areas such as calculation and parallel algorithms, computer science, cellular automata and heuristic methods for difficult optimization. The applications of his work include the development of trading models and indicator optimization in the financial field. His academic activities have resulted in around 260 publications, including two monographs, published by Springer in 2001 and 2005. Mr Tomassini has often been an invited speaker at international conferences and in 2009, he received the "EvoStar 2010 award in recognition of most outstanding contribution to Evolutionary Computation” and was rewarded with the chair of excellence at Charles III University in Madrid.
He continues to be very active in both research and teaching, as shown clearly by his citations and indexes in recent years, as well as the publication of his new book.