All Stories

  1. EvoHIIT: Preference-Based Selection in LLM-Assisted Evolutionary Design of Natural Language Solutions

    Article • July 2026, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  2. Large Language Models for Metaheuristic Design: Exploring Challenges, Limitations, Tools, Benchmarking and Future Opportunities.

    Article • July 2026, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  3. Optimizing for Difference: LLM-Driven Benchmark Design for Maximum Solver Discriminability

    Article • July 2026, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  4. Landscape-aware Automated Algorithm Design: An Efficient Framework for Real-world Optimization

    Article • July 2026, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  5. LLaMEA-BO: A Large Language Model Evolutionary Algorithm for Automatically Generating Bayesian Optimization Algorithms

    Article • July 2026, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  6. Block-Bench: A Framework for Controllable and Transparent Discrete Optimization Benchmarking

    Article • July 2026, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  7. Assessing Reproducibility in Evolutionary Computation

    Article • July 2026, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  8. Structural Bias in Multi-objective Optimization

    Article • July 2026, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  9. Maintenance Planning for Prognostic Health Management of Multi-Component Systems: A Case Study of Multi-Objective Optimisation for Railway Vehicles

    Article • PHM Society European Conference, July 2026, PHM Society

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  10. How Does Chain of Thought Think? Mechanistic Interpretability of Chain-of-Thought Reasoning with Sparse Autoencoding

    Article • Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, March 2026, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  11. A survey of features used for representing black-box single-objective continuous optimization

    Article • Swarm and Evolutionary Computation, February 2026, Elsevier

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  12. Behaviour Space Analysis of LLM-Driven Meta-Heuristic Discovery

    Article • January 2026, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  13. Mechanistic Interpretability for Transformer-Based Time Series Classification

    Article • January 2026, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  14. Benchmarking that Matters: Rethinking Benchmarking in Continuous Optimisation for Practical Impact

    Article • January 2026, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  15. From Performance to Understanding: A Vision for Explainable Automated Algorithm Design

    Article • January 2026, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  16. Investigating the Interplay of Parameterization and Optimizer in Gradient-Free Topology Optimization: A Cantilever Beam Case Study

    Article • January 2026, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  17. LLM Driven Design of Continuous Optimization Problems with Controllable High-Level Properties

    Article • January 2026, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  18. Pruning Federated Models through Loss Landscape Analysis and Client Agreement Scoring

    Article • IEEE Internet of Things Journal, January 2026, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  19. Agentic Large Language Models, a Survey

    Article • Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, December 2025, AI Access Foundation

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  20. Latest Approaches in Reasoning Large Language Models

    Article • ACM Computing Surveys, December 2025, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein, Aske Plaat

  21. Gradient Free Multi-Objective Counterfactual Explainability for Multivariate Time Series Classification

    Article • December 2025, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  22. REMAINING USEFUL LIFE IN COMPLEX MULTI-COMPONENT SYSTEMS: TAXONOMY, REVIEW, AND RESEARCH DIRECTIONS

    Article • November 2025, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  23. EvoCAD: Evolutionary CAD Code Generation with Vision Language Models

    Article • November 2025, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  24. Quality–diversity-driven robust evolutionary optimization of optical designs

    Article • Optical Engineering, July 2025, SPIE

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  25. Development of a photonic crystal spectrometer for greenhouse gas measurements

    Article • July 2025, SPIE

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  26. LLaMEA: Automatically Generating Metaheuristics with Large Language Models

    Article • July 2025, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  27. BLADE: Benchmark suite for LLM-driven Automated Design and Evolution of iterative optimisation heuristics

    Article • July 2025, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  28. Explainable Benchmarking for Iterative Optimization Heuristics

    Article • July 2025, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  29. Neighborhood Adaptive Differential Evolution

    Article • July 2025, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  30. Structural bias in optimization algorithms

    Article • July 2025, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  31. Optimizing Photonic Structures with Large Language Model Driven Algorithm Discovery

    Article • July 2025, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  32. Code Evolution Graphs: Understanding Large Language Model Driven Design of Algorithms

    Article • July 2025, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  33. Why Are You Wrong? Counterfactual Explanations for Language Grounding with 3D Objects

    Article • June 2025, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  34. Explainable Benchmarking for Iterative Optimization Heuristics

    Article • ACM Transactions on Evolutionary Learning and Optimization, May 2025, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  35. In-the-loop Hyper-Parameter Optimization for LLM-Based Automated Design of Heuristics

    Article • ACM Transactions on Evolutionary Learning and Optimization, April 2025, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  36. LLaMEA: A Large Language Model Evolutionary Algorithm for Automatically Generating Metaheuristics

    Article • IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, April 2025, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  37. Surrogate-based automated hyperparameter optimization for expensive automotive crashworthiness optimization

    Article • Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization, April 2025, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  38. Stalling in Space: Attractor Analysis for Any Algorithm

    Article • January 2025, Springer Science + Business Media

    Sarah Thomson, Dr. Niki van Stein

  39. Controlling the Mutation in Large Language Models for the Efficient Evolution of Algorithms

    Article • January 2025, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  40. XAI for Benchmarking Black-Box Metaheuristics

    Article • January 2025, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  41. Explainable AI for Evolutionary Computation

    Article • January 2025, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  42. An Introduction to the Crossroads of Explainable Artificial Intelligence and Evolutionary Computation

    Article • January 2025, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  43. Global Sensitivity Analysis Is Not Always Beneficial for Evolutionary Computation: A Study in Engineering Design

    Article • January 2025, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  44. Leveraging Lightweight Generators for Memory Efficient Continual Learning

    Article • January 2025, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  45. ACO-NSGAII: A Novel Metaheuristics for Bi-Objective Electric Vehicle Routing Problems

    Article • September 2024, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  46. A Functional Analysis Approach to Symbolic Regression

    Article • July 2024, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  47. A Corridor Model Evolutionary Algorithm for Fast Converging Green Vehicle Routing Problem

    Article • July 2024, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  48. A Critical Analysis of Raven Roost Optimization

    Article • July 2024, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  49. Modular Optimization Framework for Mixed Expensive and Inexpensive Real-World Problems

    Article • July 2024, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  50. Hot off the Press: Parallel Multi-Objective Optimization for Expensive and Inexpensive Objectives and Constraints

    Article • July 2024, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein, Kalyanmoy Deb

  51. Landscape Analysis Based vs. Domain-Specific Optimization for Engineering Design Applications: A Clear Case

    Article • June 2024, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  52. Quality-diversity driven robust evolutionary optimization of optical designs

    Article • June 2024, SPIE

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  53. Parallel multi-objective optimization for expensive and inexpensive objectives and constraints

    Article • Swarm and Evolutionary Computation, April 2024, Elsevier

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  54. Generating Cheap Representative Functions for Expensive Automotive Crashworthiness Optimization

    Article • ACM Transactions on Evolutionary Learning and Optimization, February 2024, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Fu Xing Long, Dr. Niki van Stein

  55. A Deep Dive Into Effects of Structural Bias on CMA-ES Performance Along Affine Trajectories

    Article • January 2024, Springer Science + Business Media

    Sarah Thomson, Dr. Niki van Stein

  56. Evolutionary Computation and Explainable AI: A Roadmap to Understandable Intelligent Systems

    Article • IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, January 2024, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    stefano cagnoni, Dr. Niki van Stein

  57. TX-Gen: Multi-Objective Optimization for Sparse Counterfactual Explanations for Time-Series Classification

    Article • January 2024, Scitepress

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  58. Towards Fairness in Machine Learning: Balancing Racially Imbalanced Datasets Through Data Augmentation and Generative AI

    Article • January 2024, Scitepress

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  59. Beyond the Veil of Similarity: Quantifying Semantic Continuity in Explainable AI

    Article • January 2024, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  60. Landscape-Aware Automated Algorithm Configuration Using Multi-output Mixed Regression and Classification

    Article • January 2024, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  61. Clustering-based Domain-Incremental Learning

    Article • October 2023, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  62. Curing ill-Conditionality via Representation-Agnostic Distance-Driven Perturbations

    Article • August 2023, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  63. New solutions to Cooke triplet problem via analysis of attraction basins

    Article • August 2023, SPIE

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  64. DoE2Vec: Deep-learning Based Features for Exploratory Landscape Analysis

    Article • July 2023, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein, Fu Xing Long

  65. Deep BIAS: Detecting Structural Bias using Explainable AI

    Article • July 2023, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein, Dr Fabio Caraffini

  66. AI for Expensive Optimization Problems in Industry

    Article • June 2023, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  67. Application of Functional Kernel Hypothesis Testing for Channel Selection in Time Series Classification

    Article • June 2023, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  68. Evaluation of deep unsupervised anomaly detection methods with a data-centric approach for on-line inspection

    Article • Computers in Industry, April 2023, Elsevier

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  69. BBOB Instance Analysis: Landscape Properties and Algorithm Performance Across Problem Instances

    Article • January 2023, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein, Fu Xing Long

  70. Challenges of ELA-Guided Function Evolution Using Genetic Programming

    Article • January 2023, Scitepress

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  71. A data-centric approach to anomaly detection in layer-based additive manufacturing

    Article • at - Automatisierungstechnik, January 2023, De Gruyter

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  72. Evolutionary Algorithms for Parameter Optimization—Thirty Years Later

    Article • Evolutionary Computation, January 2023, The MIT Press

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  73. The Opaque Nature of Intelligence and the Pursuit of Explainable AI

    Article • January 2023, Scitepress

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  74. Multi-surrogate Assisted Efficient Global Optimization for Discrete Problems

    Article • December 2022, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  75. BIAS: A Toolbox for Benchmarking Structural Bias in the Continuous Domain

    Article • IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, December 2022, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein, Dr Fabio Caraffini

  76. GSAreport: Easy to Use Global Sensitivity Reporting

    Article • The Journal of Open Source Software, October 2022, The Open Journal

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  77. A Comparison of Global Sensitivity Analysis Methods for Explainable AI with an Application in Genomic Prediction

    Article • August 2022, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  78. A Comparison of Global Sensitivity Analysis Methods for Explainable AI with an Application in Genomic Prediction

    Article • August 2022, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  79. Analysis of how bias in search algorithms can affect the search behaviour

    Article • July 2022, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr Fabio Caraffini, Dr. Niki van Stein

  80. Exploratory Landscape Analysis in Real-World Engineering Optimization

    Article • July 2022, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Fu Xing Long, Dr. Niki van Stein

  81. Multi-point acquisition function for constraint parallel efficient multi-objective optimization

    Article • July 2022, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  82. End-to-End Pipeline for Uncertainty Quantification and Remaining Useful Life Estimation: An Application on Aircraft Engines

    Article • PHM Society European Conference, June 2022, PHM Society

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  83. Explainable Artificial Intelligence for Exhaust Gas Temperature of Turbofan Engines

    Article • Journal of Aerospace Information Systems, June 2022, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  84. Constrained Multi-Objective Optimization with a Limited Budget of Function Evaluations

    Article • Memetic Computing, April 2022, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  85. Multitask Shape Optimization Using a 3-D Point Cloud Autoencoder as Unified Representation

    Article • IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, April 2022, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  86. Optimally Weighted Ensembles for Efficient Multi-objective Optimization

    Article • January 2022, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  87. Analysis of Structural Bias in Differential Evolution Configurations

    Article • January 2022, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein, Dr Fabio Caraffini

  88. A Comparison of many Global Sensitivity Analysis methods

    Article • IEEE Access, January 2022, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  89. Exploiting Generative Models for Performance Predictions of 3D Car Designs

    Article • December 2021, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  90. Using Machine Learning to Detect Rotational Symmetries from Reflectional Symmetries in 2D Images

    Article • December 2021, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  91. Point2FFD: Learning Shape Representations of Simulation-Ready 3D Models for Engineering Design Optimization

    Article • December 2021, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  92. BIAS: A Toolbox for Benchmarking Structural Bias in the Continuous Domain

    Article • September 2021, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein, Dr Fabio Caraffini

  93. BIAS: A Toolbox for Benchmarking Structural Bias in the Continuous Domain

    Article • September 2021, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein, Dr Fabio Caraffini

  94. Emergence of structural bias in differential evolution

    Article • July 2021, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr Fabio Caraffini, Dr. Niki van Stein

  95. Exploiting Local Geometric Features in Vehicle Design Optimization with 3D Point Cloud Autoencoders

    Article • June 2021, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  96. SAMO-COBRA: A Fast Surrogate Assisted Constrained Multi-objective Optimization Algorithm

    Article • January 2021, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  97. Requirements towards optimizing analytics in industrial processes

    Article • Procedia Computer Science, January 2021, Elsevier

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  98. A Tailored NSGA-III for Multi-objective Flexible Job Shop Scheduling

    Article • December 2020, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  99. Back To Meshes: Optimal Simulation-ready Mesh Prototypes For Autoencoder-based 3D Car Point Clouds

    Article • December 2020, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  100. Neural Network Design: Learning from Neural Architecture Search

    Article • December 2020, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  101. Improving NSGA-III for flexible job shop scheduling using automatic configuration, smart initialization and local search

    Article • July 2020, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  102. Feature Visualization for 3D Point Cloud Autoencoders

    Article • July 2020, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  103. A New Approach Towards the Combined Algorithm Selection and Hyper-parameter Optimization Problem

    Article • December 2019, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  104. On the Efficiency of a Point Cloud Autoencoder as a Geometric Representation for Shape Optimization

    Article • December 2019, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  105. Scalability of Learning Tasks on 3D CAE Models Using Point Cloud Autoencoders

    Article • December 2019, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  106. Cluster-based Kriging approximation algorithms for complexity reduction

    Article • Applied Intelligence, September 2019, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  107. Automatic Configuration of Deep Neural Networks with Parallel Efficient Global Optimization

    Article • July 2019, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  108. Designing Ships Using Constrained Multi-objective Efficient Global Optimization

    Article • January 2019, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  109. A Novel Uncertainty Quantification Method for Efficient Global Optimization

    Article • January 2018, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  110. A multi-method simulation of a high-frequency bus line

    Article • October 2017, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  111. A new acquisition function for Bayesian optimization based on the moment-generating function

    Article • October 2017, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  112. Algorithm configuration data mining for CMA evolution strategies

    Article • July 2017, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  113. Time complexity reduction in efficient global optimization using cluster kriging

    Article • July 2017, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  114. A framework for evaluating meta-models for simulation-based optimisation

    Article • December 2016, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  115. Local subspace-based outlier detection using global neighbourhoods

    Article • December 2016, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  116. Towards Data Driven Process Control in Manufacturing Car Body Parts

    Article • December 2016, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  117. Fuzzy clustering for Optimally Weighted Cluster Kriging

    Article • July 2016, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  118. An Incremental Algorithm for Repairing Training Sets with Missing Values

    Article • January 2016, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  119. Analysis and Visualization of Missing Value Patterns

    Article • January 2016, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  120. Optimally Weighted Cluster Kriging for Big Data Regression

    Article • January 2015, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein

  121. Fitness Landscape Analysis of NK Landscapes and Vehicle Routing Problems by Expanded Barrier Trees

    Article • January 2013, Springer Science + Business Media

    Dr. Niki van Stein