The 2009 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games

I have just arrived in Milan for the 2009 CIG (Computational Intelligence and Games) conference. This was a conference that Simon Lucas and I started in 2005. Simon is now editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence in Games. The 2005 conference, I believe, was partly responsible for paving the way to enabling this journal to be established. I am fortunate enough to serve as an Associate Editor for the journal.

As I said above, the first conference (actually it's a symposium, as the correct title is The IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games) was held in 2005 in Essex (UK). The original plan was to hold the symposium every two years, but it was so successful that we decided to hold it again in 2006. This time, Sushil Louis and I chaired it. It was held at the University of Reno in Nevada.

In 2007 it was held in Hawaii, as part of the then newly formed Computational Intelligence Symposium Series of conferences (CISS). Simon, again chaired this symposium, along with Sung-Bae Cho and Alan Blair. Actually, at the 2007 CISS, I chaired the associated scheduling conference (Computational Intelligence in Scheduling (CISched).

In 2008, CIG was held in Perth, Australia, chaired by my good friends Luigi Barone and Phil Hingston.

The sympsium has now moved to Milan (chaired by Pier Luca Lanzi). It has certainly done the rounds (Essex, Reno, Hawaii, Perth and Milan) and, having been to all of them, I know from first hand experience that it is going from strength to strength.

Looking at this years program it promises to be a very interesting week. If you have an interest in computational intelligence or games, take a look at http://www.ieee-cig.org/.