NEWS

Biography

Yi Mei is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Engineering and Computer Science, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand. He is leading the Evolutionary Computation for Combinatorial Optimisation (ECCO) Research Group. He holds a PhD in Computer Science (2010) and a BSc in Mathematics (2005, in the Special Class for the Gifted Young（中国科大少年班） [Wikipedia], a special undergraduate program selecting top 50 high-school students no older than age 15 nationwide) from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). Before his current appointment, he worked as a Provost’s Research Associate (2010-2012, Financial Optimisation) at Chinese University of Hong Kong, and ARC Discovery Research Fellow (2012-2015, Large Scale Optimisation) at RMIT University, Australia.

Interests
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Evolutionary Computation and Learning
  • Multi-objective Optimisation and Decision Making
  • AI Planning and Scheduling
  • Explainable AI
Education

  • PhD in Computer Science, 2010

    University of Science and Technology of China

  • MSc in Computer Science, 2007

    University of Science and Technology of China

  • BSc in Mathematics, 2005

    University of Science and Technology of China

Research

Automated Heuristic Design
This research is to use AI and evolutionary learning (particularly genetic programming) approaches to automatically design decision making heuristics.
Evolutionary Scheduling and Combinatorial Optimisation
This research is to design effective algorithms for complex scheduling and combinatorial optimisation problems and apply them to real-world examples such as supply chain, cloud scheduling and tourism.
Large Scale Optimisation
This research is to develop efficient algorithms to solve large scale optimisation problems.

Grants and Awards

Grants

  • 2022-2023, “The kapahaka software judging system”, SfTI Seed Project Fund, $200,000 NZD. (Co-PI)
  • 2020-2027, “A data-science driven evolution of aquaculture for building the blue economy (AI/ML Advanced Research and Applications to Aquaculture)”, MBIE SSIF Fund on Data Science, $13,000,000 NZD. (Key Researcher)
  • 2019-2020, “AI/ML techniques for Waste Collection in NZ”, industrial project with Northland Waste, $16,000 NZD. (PI)
  • 2017-2020, “Automatic Design of Heuristics for Dynamic Arc Routing Problem with Genetic Programming”, 16-VUW-079, Marsden Fund Fast-Start Grant, $300,000 NZD. (Sole PI)
  • 2017-2020, “Cooperative Co-evolution for Large Scale Black Box Optimisation”, 61673194, National Natural Science Foundation of China, ¥610,000 RMB (Overseas AI)
  • 2018, “Real-Time Tourist Trip Recommendation using Genetic Programming”, University Research Fund, Victoria University of Wellington, $28,720 NZD (Sole PI)
  • 2016-2018, “Digital Data in Schools: An Exploration of Research and Practice”, Victoria University of Wellington Digital Future Grant, $20,000 NZD (Co-PI)
  • 2017, “Evolving Interpretable Flexible Job Shop Scheduling Rules with GP”, Research Establishment Grant, Victoria University of Wellington, $10,000 NZD (Sole PI)
  • 2014, RMIT Near-miss grant ($25,000 AUD awarded for being ranked top 10% of the unsuccessful applications for the 2014 ARC DECRA funding)
  • 2009, IEEE CIS Walter Karplus Summer Research Grant

Awards

  • 2018, Victoria University of Wellington Early Research Excellence Award
  • 2018, Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence Best Paper Runner-Up Award (paper)
  • 2018, International Conference on Web Services (ARC/CORE Rank A) Best Paper Runner-Up (paper)
  • 2017, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation (top journal in EC, IF = 10.629) Outstanding Paper Award (paper)
  • 2016, European Conference on Evolutionary Computation in Combinatorial Optimization Best Paper Nomination (paper)
  • 2014, 2nd Prize, Competition at IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence: Optimisation of Problems with Multiple Interdependent Components (as sole algorithm designer and programmer)
  • 2010, Chinese Academy Of Sciences Dean’s Award (Top 200 postgraduates all over China)

Featured Publications

Recent Publications

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Yahui Jia, Yi Mei, Mengjie Zhang (2022). Confidence-based Ant Colony Optimization for Capacitated Electric Vehicle Routing Problem with Comparison of Different Encoding Schemes. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation.

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Xin Yao, Ke Tang, Yi Mei, Jialin Liu, Changwu Huang, Hao Tong (2021). Capacitated Arc Routing Problems in Smart City. Artificial Intelligence (in Chinese).

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Yuan Tian, Tifan Xiong, Zhenyuan Liu, Yi Mei, Wan Li (2021). Multi-Objective Multi-Skill Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem with skill switches: Model and Evolutionary Approaches. Computers & Industrial Engineering.

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Mazhar Ansari Ardeh, Yi Mei, Mengjie Zhang (2021). Genetic Programming with Knowledge Transfer and Guided Search for Uncertain Capacitated Arc Routing Problem. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation.

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Fangfang Zhang, Su Nguyen, Yi Mei, Mengjie Zhang (2021). Genetic Programming for Production Scheduling: An Evolutionary Learning Approach. Springer.

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Teaching

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

Supervision

I am leading the Evolutionary Computation for Combinatorial Optimisation (ECCO) Research Group at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

I am a (co-)supervisor of 21 PhD students and 6 Master students, as well as a number of honours and summer research students.

Click to see the full list.

PhD

  1. Jern Tat Chin (Victoria University of Wellington, 2021): "AI and ML for Finance Prediction" (with Prof Hai Lin)
  2. Jordan MacLachlan (Victoria University of Wellington, 2021): "Evolutionary Computation for Ambulance Routing" (with Prof Mengjie Zhang)
  3. Zhixing Huang (Victoria University of Wellington, 2020): "Genetic Programming for Dynamic Scheduling" (with Prof Mengjie Zhang)
  4. Meng Xu (Victoria University of Wellington, 2020): "Genetic Programming for Dynamic Scheduling" (with Dr Mengjie Zhang)
  5. Taiwo Akindele (Victoria University of Wellington, 2020): "Resource Allocation problem in Cloud" (with Dr Hui Ma)
  6. Shaolin Wang (Victoria University of Wellington, 2019): "Genetic Programming for Uncertain Arc Routing Problem" (with Prof Mengjie Zhang)
  7. Joao Costa (Victoria University of Wellington, 2019): "Hyper-heuristic for Vehicle Routing" (with Prof Mengjie Zhang)
  8. Amirhossein Mostofi (Victoria University of Wellington, 2019): "Optimisation in Pharmecautical Supply Chain Management" (with Dr Vipul Jain)
  9. Shubhangi Patel (Victoria University of Wellington, 2019): "Operations research in medical scheduling" (with Dr Vipul Jain)
  10. Mazhar Anzari Ardeh (Victoria University of Wellington, 2018): "Genetic Programming and Transfer Learning for Uncertain Arc Routing" (with Prof Mengjie Zhang)
  11. Mahdi Abdollahi (Victoria University of Wellington, graduated in 2021): "Improving Medical Document Classification via Feature Engineering" (with Dr Sharon Gao, Prof Jinyan Li (UTS), and Dr Shameek Ghosh)
  12. Fangfang Zhang (Victoria University of Wellington, graduated in 2021): "Genetic Programming Hyper-heuristics for Dynamic Flexible Job Shop Scheduling" [PhD thesis] (with Prof Mengjie Zhang)
  13. Guanqiang Gao (Beijing Institute of Technology): "Evolutionary Computation for Robot Pathfinding and Resource Allocation" (with A/Prof Will Browne and A/Prof Bin Xin)
  14. Harry He (Victoria University of Wellington, graduated in 2020): "Wind Environment Study of High-rise Residential Building by using Multiple Computational Tools" [PhD thesis] (with Prof Marc Aurel Schnabel)
  15. Atiya Masood (Victoria University of Wellington, graduated in 2020): "Many-Objective Genetic Programming for Job-Shop Scheduling" [PhD thesis] (with Dr Aaron Chen, and Prof Mengjie Zhang)
  16. Boxiong Tan (Victoria University of Wellington, graduated in 2020): "An Evolutionary Computation Approach to Resource Allocation in Container-based Clouds" [PhD thesis] (with Dr Hui Ma)
  17. Binzi Xu (Jiangnan University, China): "Intelligent Optimisation Methods for Production Scheduling" [PhD thesis (in Chinese)] (with Prof Yan Wang)
  18. John Park (Victoria University of Wellington, graduated in 2019): "Evolving Dispatching Rules for Dynamic Job Shop Scheduling Problems using Genetic Programming" [PhD thesis] (with Dr Aaron Chen, Dr Su Nguyen, and Prof Mengjie Zhang)
  19. Deepak Karunakaran (Victoria University of Wellington, graduated in 2019): "Active Learning Methods for Dynamic Job Shop Scheduling using Genetic Programming under Uncertain Environment" [PhD thesis] (with Dr Aaron Chen, and Prof Mengjie Zhang)
  20. Alexandre Sawczuk Da Silva (Victoria University of Wellington, graduated in 2019): "Evolutionary Computation for Multifaceted Web Service Composition" [PhD thesis] (with Dr Hui Ma, and Prof Mengjie Zhang)
  21. Md. Jakirul Islam (RMIT University, Australia, graduated in 2018): "Structural Optimization Using Evolutionary Multimodal and Bilevel Optimization Techniques" [PhD thesis] (with Prof Xiaodong Li)
  22. Yuxin Liu (Southwestern University, China, graduated in 2018): "Bio-inspired Route Optimization and Source Identification" [PhD thesis (in Chinese)] (with Prof Mengjie Zhang, and Prof Zili Zhang)
  23. Jing Xie (RMIT University, Australia, graduated in 2017): "On the Investigation of the Large-Scale Grouping Constrained Storage Location Assignment Problem" [PhD thesis] (with Dr Andy Song, Prof Andreas Ernst, and Prof Xiaodong Li)

Masters

  1. Fergus Currie (Victoria University of Wellington, 2021): "Multi-criteria decision making for genetics breeding program design" (with Dr Maren Wellenreuther and Dr Linley Jesson, Plant and Food Research)
  2. Boon Wan Tan (Victoria University of Wellington, 2019): "Neural Network for Combinatorial Optimisation Problems"
  3. ManWui Choi (Victoria University of Wellington, 2019): "Evolutionary Computation for Container Loading"
  4. Shaolin Wang (Victoria University of Wellington, 2018): "Evolutionary Computation for Uncertain Arc Routing" (with Prof Mengjie Zhang)
  5. Youhan Xia (University of Melbourne, Australia, graduated in 2017): "Ant Colony System for Itinerary Planning with Restaurants" (with Dr Jeffrey Chan)
  6. Boxiong Tan (Victoria University of Wellington, graduated in 2016): "Evolutionary Computation for Service Location Allocation" (with Dr Hui Ma)
  7. Haobo Fu (University of Science and Technology of China, graduated in 2010): "Meta-heuristics for Capacitated Arc Routing Problems" (with Prof Ke Tang)

Honours Students

  • Sai Panda (Victoria University of Wellington, 2021): “Simplifying Scheduling Rules Evolved by Genetic Programming”
  • Jordan MacLachlan (Victoria University of Wellington, 2020): “Genetic Programming for Uncertain Arc Routing”
  • Jericho Jackson (Victoria University of Wellington, 2020): “Stochastic Orienteering Problem”
  • Hayden Dyne (Victoria University of Wellington, 2020): “Multi-dimensional bin packing”
  • Rhaz Solomon (Victoria University of Wellington, 2019): “Bloat Control in Genetic Programming”
  • Samuel Meredith (Victoria University of Wellington, 2018): “Genetic Programming for Dynamic Orienteering Problem”
  • Michael Sirvid (Victoria University of Wellington, 2018): “Genetic Programming for Online Bin Packing”
  • Valerie Chan (Victoria University of Wellington, 2017): “Evolutionary Computation for Dynamic Orienteering Problem”
  • Daniel Yska (Victoria University of Wellington, 2017): “Genetic Programming Hyper-heuristics for Flexible Job Shop Scheduling” (with Prof Mengjie Zhang)

Summer Research Scholarship Students

  • Fergus Currie (Victoria University of Wellington, 2020): “Multi-Criteria Desicion Making for Fish Breeding Program” (NZ Data Science Program in collaboration with Plant and Food)
  • Sai Panda (Victoria University of Wellington, 2020): “Interpretable Genetic Programming for Scheduling”
  • Jordan MacLachlan (Victoria University of Wellington, 2019): “Genetic Programming for Uncertain Arc Routing”
  • Jericho Jackson (Victoria University of Wellington, 2019): “Genetic Programming Hyper-heuristics for Stochastic Tourist Trip Design” (with Prof Mengjie Zhang)
  • Shaolin Wang (Victoria University of Wellington, 2018): “Evolutionary Computation for Uncertain Arc Routing” (with Prof Mengjie Zhang)
  • Jordan MacLachlan (Victoria University of Wellington, 2017): “Evolutionary Computation for Dynamic Arc Routing”
  • Daniel Yska (Victoria University of Wellington, 2017): “Genetic Programming Hyper-heuristics for Flexible Job Shop Scheduling” (with Prof Mengjie Zhang)
  • Josiah Jacobsen-Grocott (Victoria University of Wellington, 2016): “Evolutionary Computation for Dynamic Vehicle Routing”
  • Scott Holdaway (Victoria University of Wellington, 2016): “Feature Extraction in NEAT for Atari Games” (with Dr Aaron Chen)
  • Will Hardwick-Smith (Victoria University of Wellington, 2016): “Transfer Learning in NEAT for Atari Games” (with Dr Aaron Chen)
  • Michael Riley (Victoria University of Wellington, 2015): “Evolutionary Computation for Dynamic Job Shop Scheduling”
  • Longfei Yan (Victoria University of Wellington, 2015): “Evolutionary Web Service Composition” (with Dr Hui Ma)

Professional Services

Editorship

  • Associate Editor of International Journal of Applied Evolutionary Computation
  • Editorial Board Member of International Journal of Computational Intelligence and Applications
  • Editorial Board Member of International Journal of Bio-Inspired Computation
  • Editorial Board Member of International Journal of Automation and Control
  • Guest Editor of Special Issue on Automated Design and Adaptation of Heuristics for Scheduling and Combinatorial Optimisation, Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines, 2016

Conference Organisation

  • Finance Chair, Conference on Image and Vision Computing New Zealand (IVCNZ) 2020
  • Proceedings Chair, IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) 2019
  • Tutorial Co-chair, Pacific Rim International Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (PRICAI) 2019
  • Sponsorship Chair, Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence 2018
  • Technical Co-chair, International Conference on Data Intelligence and Security (ICDIS) 2018
  • Organisational Committee Member, International Conference on Computers and Industrial Engineering (CIE) 2018
  • Co-Chair, IEEE Symposium on Evolutionary Scheduling and Combinatorial Optimisation, in IEEE SSCI 2019, 2020, 2021
  • Co-chair of Special Session on Evolutionary Scheduling and Combinatorial Optimisation, IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021
  • Co-chair of Special Session on Evolutionary Computation for Service-Oriented Computing, IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) 2017, 2018, 2019
  • Co-chair of Special Session on Transfer Learning in Evolutionary Computation, IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) 2016
  • Co-chair of Special Session on Computational Intelligence for Scheduling and Combinatorial Optimization, Asia-Pacific Symposium on Intelligent and Evolutionary Systems (IES) 2016

Conference Program Committee Member

I serve as a PC member of 60+ international conferences.

Click to see the full list.

  • AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) 2019, 2020, 2021
  • International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) 2021, 2022
  • ACM Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021
  • IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022
  • IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI) 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022
  • EMO 2021
  • International Conference on Simulated Evolution And Learning (SEAL) 2014, 2017
  • Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AJCAI) 2015, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021
  • International Conference on Advanced Computational Intelligence (ICACI) 2018, 2020, 2021
  • International Conference on Computational Collective Intelligence (ICCCI) 2019
  • International Conference on Swarm Intelligence (ICSI) 2018, 2022
  • International Conference on Data Mining and Big Data (DMBD) 2018, 2019, 2020
  • International Conference on Swarm Intelligence (ANTS) 2016, 2018, 2022
  • International Conference on Advanced Computational Intelligence (ICACI) 2018
  • International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES) 2018, 2019, 2020
  • International Conference on Data Intelligence and Security (ICDIS) 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022
  • Australasian Conference on Artificial Life and Computational Intelligence (ACALCI) 2016, 2017
  • Asia-Pacific Symposium on Intelligent and Evolutionary Systems (IES) 2016, 2017
  • International Conference on Innovations in Bio-Inspired Computing and Applications (IBICA) 2015, 2016, 2017
  • International Conference on Hybrid Intelligent Systems (HIS) 2016
  • International Conference of Soft Computing and Pattern Recognition (SoCPaR) 2015, 2016
  • International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and Applications (ISDA) 2016
  • World Congress on Nature and Biologically Inspired Computing (NaBIC) 2016
  • BRICS Congress on Computational Intelligence (BRCIS-CCI) 2015
  • International Workshop on Evolutionary Computation and Its Applications (ECIA) 2018
  • Conference on Image and Vision Computing New Zealand (IVCNZ) 2020

Journal Reviewer

I serve as a reviewer of 50+ international journals, including the top/major journals in the EC/OR fields.

Click to see the full list.

  1. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, IEEE (ARC/CORE Tier A*, Q1)
  2. ACM Computing Surveys, ACM (ARC/CORE Tier A*, Q1)
  3. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, IEEE (ARC/CORE Tier A*, Q1)
  4. Evolutionary Computation Journal, MIT Press (ARC/CORE Tier A, Q1)
  5. IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, IEEE (ARC/CORE Tier A, Q1) (Outstanding Reviewer 2018)
  6. European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier (ARC/CORE Tier A, Q1)
  7. IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine, IEEE (Q1)
  8. Swarm and Evolutionary Computation, Elsevier (Q1)
  9. Future Generation Computer Systems, Elsevier (ARC/CORE Tier A, Q1)
  10. Information Sciences, Elsevier (ARC/CORE Tier A, Q1)
  11. Proceedings of the IEEE, IEEE (Q1)
  12. Transportation Research Part C, Elsevier (Q1)
  13. Transportation Research Part D, Elsevier (Q1)
  14. IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing, IEEE (Q1)
  15. Journal of the Operational Research Society, Taylor & Francis (Q1)
  16. IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence, IEEE
  17. IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence, IEEE
  18. ACM Transactions on Evolutionary Learning and Optimization, ACM
  19. Journal of Cleaner Production, Elsevier (Q1)
  20. International Journal of Production Research, Taylor & Francis (Q1)
  21. Waste Management, Elsevier (Q1)
  22. Computers and Industrial Engineering, Elsevier (Q1)
  23. IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, IEEE (Q1)
  24. Pervasive and Mobile Computing, Elsevier (Q1)
  25. Applied Soft Computing, Elsevier (Q1) (Outstanding Reviewer 2015, 2017)
  26. Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, Elsevier (Q1)
  27. Expert Systems with Applications, Elsevier (Q1)
  28. Knowledge-based Systems, Elsevier (Q1)
  29. Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, Elsevier (Q1)
  30. Journal of Computational Science, Elsevier (Q1)
  31. NeuroComputing, Elsevier (Q1)
  32. Journal of Scheduling, Springer (Q1)
  33. Journal of Heuristics, Springer
  34. Complexity, Hindawi (Q1)
  35. World Wide Web, Springer (Q2)
  36. Swarm Intelligence, Springer
  37. Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines, Springer
  38. IEEE Access, IEEE
  39. IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica, IEEE
  40. Mathematical Problems in Engineering, Hindawi
  41. Journal of Information Technology & Software Engineering, Longdom Publishing SL
  42. Applied Sciences, MDPI
  43. Soft Computing, Springer
  44. Complex & Intelligent Systems, Springer
  45. Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience, Hindawi
  46. Computational Optimization and Applications, Springer
  47. Memetic Computing, Springer
  48. Journal of Industrial and Production Engineering, Taylor & Francis
  49. Journal of Computer Science and Technology
  50. Natural Computing, Springer
  51. EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, Springer
  52. PLOS ONE Journal
  53. Frontiers in Computer Science, Frontiers
  54. Frontier of Engineering Management, Frontiers

Membership

Internal (VUW)

  • Red-Folders Committee Member (Admission for Masters of COMP/AI/CGRA, PGDipSc COMP/AI/CGRA)
  • ENGR/COMP489 (Honours Project) Committee Member, 2019, 2020

Resources

Code

Datasets

  • Job Shop Scheduling

  • Flexible Job Shop Scheduling

  • Capacitated Arc Routing Problem

    • The gdb dataset: 23 small instances (~30 nodes and ~60 required edges).
    • The val dataset: 10 groups of medium to large instances (~50 nodes and ~100 required edges). Each group contains 3 or 4 instances (denoted as A, B, C, D), which are based on the same graph but different vehicle capacity.
    • The egl dataset: 8 groups of large instances (~150 nodes and ~200 required edges). The former 4 groups (e1 to e4) and the latter 4 groups (s1 to s4) are based on the same graph, but different subsets of required edges. Each group contains 3 instances (denoted as A, B, C), based on the same graph and required edges, but with different vehicle capacity.
    • The EGL-G dataset: 2 groups of large instances (~250 nodes and ~400 required edges). Each group contains 5 instances (denoted as A, B, C, D, E), based on the same graph and required edges, but with different vehicle capacity.
    • The Beijing&Hefei dataset: 2 large datasets, one generated from the road network of Bejing, and the other from Hefei, two big cities in China. Each dataset has 10 instances, with thousands of edges.
    • Large scale datasets, and the best solutions we found.
    • Multi-Depot CARP datasets.

  • Vehicle Routing Problems

  • Bin Packing Problem
  • Timetabling Problem

Contact