Mohamed El Yafrani

Postdoc fellow
Operations Research group
Department of Materials and Production
Fibigerstræde 16 4-110
9220 Aalborg Ø, DK
Aalborg University

Research interests

• Optimisation: problems with multiple interdependent components, fitness landscape analysis, modelling, decomposability in large scale problems
• Metaheuristics and evolutionary computation: local search algorithms, genetic and memetic algorithms, genetic programming, EA theory
• Machine learning: theoretical machine learning, neural networks, probabilistic models, evolutionary machine learning
• Application areas: planning, renewable energy, defence, supply chains

Research experience

• November 2018 (current):​ Postdoc fellow at the Operations Research group, department of materials and production, Aalborg University, Denmark
• December 2014-September 2018: PhD in Computer Science, LRIT, Mohammed V university in Rabat, Morocco (Supervisor: Pr. Belaïd Ahiod)
• October 2016: Visiting PhD student, Optimisation and Logistics group, The University of Adelaide, Australia (Supervisor: Dr. Markus Wagner)

Citations

• Google scholar
• DBLP

Publications

Journal papers

• Mohcin Allaoui, Belaïd Ahiod, Mohamed El Yafrani. "A hybrid crow search algorithm for solving the DNA fragment assembly problem", Expert Systems with Applications, Elsevier, 2018.
  
• Mohamed El Yafrani and Belaïd Ahiod. "Efficiently Solving the Traveling Thief Problem using Hill Climbing and Simulated Annealing", Information Sciences, Elsevier, 2017.
  Additional material: Java code for CS2SA
• Mohamed El Yafrani, Marcella S. R. Martins, Markus Wagner, Belaïd Ahiod, Myriam Delgado, Ricardo Lüders. "A hyperheuristic approach based on low-level heuristics for the travelling thief problem", Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines, Springer, 2017.
  Additional material: Read-only link | MATLAB codes for: GPHS, GPHS*, and GA
• Mohamed El Yafrani and Belaïd Ahiod. "A Local Search based Approach for Solving the Travelling Thief Problem: The pros and cons", Applied Soft Computing, Elsevier, 2016.
  Additional material: Java code for JNB and J2B

Conference papers

• Mohamed El Yafrani, Marcella Martins, Myriam Delgado, Ricardo Lüders, Inkyung Sung, Markus Wagner and Diego Oliva. "On updating probabilistic graphical models in a Bayesian Optimisation Algorithm", BRACIS 2019, Salvador, Brazil. (To appear)
  Additional material: preprint
• Marcella Martins, Mohamed El Yafrani, Roberto Santana, Myriam Delgado, Ricardo Lüders, and Belaïd Ahiod. "On the performance of multi-objective estimation of distribution algorithms for combinatorial problems", WCCI/CEC 2018, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
  Nominated for best paper
• Mohamed El Yafrani, Marcella Martins, Mehdi El Krari, Markus Wagner, Myriam Delgado, Belaïd Ahiod, and Ricardo Lüders. "A fitness landscape analysis of the Travelling Thief Problem", GECCO 2018, Kyoto, Japan.
• Marcella Martins, Mohamed El Yafrani, Myriam Delgado, Markus Wagner, Belaïd Ahiod, and Ricardo Lüders. "HSEDA: A Heuristic Selection Approach Based on Estimation of Distribution Algorithm for the Travelling Thief Problem", GECCO 2017, Berlin, Germany.
  Additional material: PDF | code (MATLAB & java)
• Mohamed El Yafrani, Shelvin Chand, Aneta Neumann, Belaïd Ahiod, and Markus Wagner. "Multi-objectiveness in the Single-objective Traveling Thief Problem", GECCO 2017, Berlin, Germany. (poster)
  Additional material: PDF
• Mohamed El Yafrani and Belaïd Ahiod. "Population-based vs. Single-solution Heuristics for the Travelling Thief Problem" GECCO 2016, Denver, CO, USA.
  Additional material: java code | jar executables + python scripts | results
• Mohamed El Yafrani and Belaïd Ahiod. "Cosolver2B: An Efficient Local Search Heuristic for the Travelling Thief Problem" AICCSA 2015, Marrakech, Morocco.
  Additional material: java code | jar executables + python scripts
• Mohamed El Yafrani and Belaïd Ahiod. "Étude de Problèmes d'Optimisation Combinatoire à Multiples Composantes Interdépendantes" LRIT URAC days meeting, Rabat, Morocco.

Teaching

Lecturer | Aalborg University

Autumn 2019 - Optimisation and programming

• Part I: linear programming, sensitivity analysis, integer programming, multiple objectives and goal programming
• Part II: problem complexity, local search algorithms, metaheuristics

Spring 2019 - Operational Planning and Control

• Linear programming, sensitivity analysis, goal programming, integer programming

Teaching Assistant | Mohammed V University in Rabat

2015-2017: Data structures and advanced C programming

Supervision

Aalborg University

• Optimisation of renewable energy trading strategies using stochastic programming (2 master groups)
• Multi-level supply chain optimisation (1 student)

Mohammed V University in Rabat

I helped supervising bachelor and master thesis in different topics: metaheuristics for bioinformatics problems, puzzle solving, computer networks, and web development

Services to the community

Journal reviewer

• Applied Soft Computing
• Information Sciences
• Sustainability
• International Journal of Bio-Inspired Computation
• Engineering Science and Technology, an International Journal

Conference PC member

• IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC 2019)
• MEDES'18. Track: Soft Computing & Applications in Digital Ecosystems
• Black-Box Discrete Optimization Benchmarking Workshop Series: @GECCO'2018, @PPSN'2018
• International Workshop on Benchmarking of Computational Intelligence Algorithms
• The First International Conference On Intelligent Computing in Data Sciences (student committee)

Grants & Awards

• July 2017: Our solver was ranked 1st (shared prize) during the TTP 2017 competition
• April 2017: ACM grant to attend the "50 Years of the ACM Turing Award Celebration Conference" in San Francisco, California
• September 2016: IEEE CIS Graduate Student Research Grant
• May 2016: ACM Travel grant to attend GECCO 2016 in Denver, Colorado
• October 2015: QCRI Scholarship to attend AICCSA 2015 in Marrakech, Morocco

Memberships

• Member of the ACM Special Interest Group on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (ACM SIGEVO)
• Member of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (IEEE CIS)
• Member of the AI_group
• Student founding and committee member of the Moroccan Section of the International Neural Network Society

Contact information

If you are interested in my research, feel free to send me an email at mey@mp.aau.dk or m.elyafrani@gmail.com and I will be happy to answer you ASAP!