Koen van der Blom joined the ADA research group as a post-doctoral researcher. From March 2019 onward he started working with Holger Hoos in the area of meta-algorithmics. One of the things he works on is a tool called Sparkle. Sparkle aims to make meta-algorithmics such as algorithm selection and configuration easier to use for a wide audience. Besides this, he is also interested in performance analysis and prediction. What can be said about the expected performance of a new instance, based on previously seen instances? And how can you compare performance in a fair way?
Before this, during his PhD, Koen worked on multi-objective mixed-integer evolutionary algorithms applied to early-stage building design under the supervision of Michael Emmerich, Hèrm Hofmeyer, and Thomas Bäck. He continues to be interested in these problems, and particularly when it comes to optimisation in mixed-integer spaces. Who knows, perhaps combining aspects from the old and new will yet lead to other exciting work.
ADA Research Group 