Held in conjunction with MICAI 2026
Automated Heuristic Design
& Algorithm Selection
A specialized forum for researchers and practitioners interested in automating algorithmic decision-making for optimization, search, and artificial intelligence.
Scope and Motivation
Automating the design, selection, configuration, and adaptation of algorithms.
Many real-world computational problems require sophisticated algorithms whose performance depends strongly on the structure of the problem, the characteristics of the instance, and the operational context in which they are deployed. Traditionally, the design, selection, and configuration of these algorithms have relied heavily on expert knowledge, manual experimentation, and problem-specific tuning.
AHDAS focuses on approaches that seek to automate these processes. The workshop brings together researchers and practitioners interested in systems that can automatically design, select, configure, learn, or adapt algorithms according to problem features, performance feedback, changing environments, or application requirements.
Algorithmic decision-making
Methods that select, configure, generate, or adapt algorithms using instance features, feedback, performance traces, and application constraints.
Cross-disciplinary forum
The workshop connects artificial intelligence, computational intelligence, operations research, evolutionary computation, machine learning, AutoML, and combinatorial optimization.
Community building
AHDAS aims to incentivize collaboration, disseminate recent advances, identify open research challenges, and strengthen the visibility of this area within the broader AI community.
Research areas
Topics of interest
Submissions should address, but are not limited to, the following topics.
- Hyper-heuristics for combinatorial, continuous, dynamic, or multi-objective optimization
- Selection hyper-heuristics and generation hyper-heuristics
- Automated heuristic design and automated algorithm design
- Automated algorithm selection and per-instance algorithm selection
- Automated algorithm portfolios and solver portfolios
- Automated algorithm configuration and parameter control
- Meta-learning for optimization and algorithm recommendation
- Instance characterization, feature extraction, and landscape analysis
- Learning-based optimization and adaptive search strategies
- Reinforcement learning for heuristic selection or algorithm control
- Neural, symbolic, evolutionary, or hybrid methods for heuristic generation
- Automated design of metaheuristics and search operators
- Transfer learning and generalization in heuristic or algorithm selection
- Explainability, robustness, and reliability in automated algorithmic systems
- Benchmarking, reproducibility, and performance assessment
- Applications in scheduling, routing, packing, planning, logistics, timetabling, energy systems, bioinformatics, engineering design, and other domains
- Case studies involving real-world algorithm selection, heuristic design, or optimization systems
- Negative results, methodological lessons, and limitations of automated heuristic design
Call for Papers
Submission guidelines
All submissions must be written in English and should present original work that has not been previously published and is not under review elsewhere. MICAI indicates that only complete and finished papers will be reviewed, not abstracts.
Proceedings. Accepted workshop papers will be included in the MICAI proceedings. According to the MICAI 2026 call, workshop proceedings will appear in the Springer LNAI series and are indexed in Scopus, SCImago, DBLP, INSPEC, and EI Compendex.
Timeline
Important dates
The following dates are aligned with the MICAI 2026 call for papers.
Paper submission deadline
Submit complete workshop papers through Microsoft CMT and select the AHDAS workshop track.
Submit complete workshop papers through Microsoft CMT and select the AHDAS workshop track.
Notification of acceptance
Camera-ready submission
Early-bird registration for authors
Payment and registration deadline for authors
MICAI 2026 conference
Chihuahua, Mexico.
Chihuahua, Mexico.
Workshop Format
Three-hour program
The workshop is planned as a three-hour event including contributed paper presentations, short presentations, and a discussion session on open challenges in automated heuristic design and algorithm selection. The final format may be adjusted depending on the number and type of accepted contributions.
Researchers, students, and practitioners
The workshop is intended for participants working in AI, computational intelligence, evolutionary computation, operations research, machine learning, AutoML, combinatorial optimization, and related areas.
Adaptive, data-driven algorithmic systems
AHDAS is particularly suitable for participants interested in reusable and general-purpose systems that design, select, configure, or adapt algorithms automatically.
Organizing Team
Organizers
José Carlos Ortiz Bayliss
Tecnológico de Monterrey
Ivan Amaya
Tecnológico de Monterrey
Jorge Mario Cruz Duarte
Université de Lille, CNRS, Inria, CRIStAL, Lille, France
Reviewing body
Program Committee
- Prof. Emma HartNapier UniversityUnited Kingdom
- Dr. Francesco CecereUniversité de Lille, CNRS, Inria, CRIStALFrance
- Dr. Guillaume HelbecqueUniversité de Bordeaux, LaBRI, Centre Inria de l'Université de BordeauxFrance
- Dr. Hugo Terashima MarínTecnológico de MonterreyMexico
- Dr. Iván AmayaTecnológico de MonterreyMexico
- Dr. Jesús Guillermo Falcón CardonaInstitution to be confirmedCountry to be confirmed
- Dr. Jorge Mario Cruz DuarteUniversité de Lille, CNRS, Inria, CRIStALFrance
- Dr. José Carlos Ortiz BaylissTecnológico de MonterreyMexico
- Dr. Juan Carlos Gómez CarranzaUniversidad de GuanajuatoMexico
- Dr. Juan Gabriel Aviña CervantesUniversidad de GuanajuatoMexico
- Dr. Lander Argote-GarciaUniversité de Lille, CNRS, Inria, CRIStALFrance
- Dr. Muhammad Junaid AliUniversité de Lille, CNRS, Inria, CRIStALFrance
- Dr. Mustafa MisirDuke Kunshan UniversityChina
- Dr. Santiago Enrique Conant PablosTecnológico de MonterreyMexico
Contact
Questions about AHDAS?
For questions regarding the workshop, please contact the organizers.