Doctoral Summer School on Evolutionary Computing, Optimisation and Data Mining

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The Faculty of Computer Science at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași is pleased to welcome participants to the 2025 edition of the Doctoral Summer School in Evolutionary Computing, Optimisation and Data Mining (ECODAM, June 16-19, 2025). Since its inaugural edition in 2005, ECODAM has grown into a significant academic event, bringing together yearly doctoral students from Romania, Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, and distinguished academics from across the world.

Over the course of 17 successful editions, the summer school has served as a platform for advanced study, collaboration, and the exchange of ideas in key areas of Computer Science. In its 20th year, ECODAM continues to evolve. This edition embraces new and influential fields such as Bioinformatics and Natural Language Processing, reflecting the broader transformations taking place within Computer Science.

We are honored to host returning speakers of international distinction, as well as new invited experts who will contribute to this year’s high level academic program. For the second consecutive year, ECODAM also features the Core Bioinformatics Workshop, further broadening the scope and depth of its content. We look forward to a stimulating and productive edition, and we thank all participants (invited speakers, PhD Students and researchers), as well as our sponsors, for contributing to the continued success of this long-standing initiative.

Speakers

  • Kenneth DeJong – George Mason University – Fairfax, Virginia, United States
  • Liviu Dinu – University of Bucharest Romania
  • Sorin Istrail – Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States
  • Irina Mohorianu – University of Cambridge United Kingdom
  • Gabriela Ochoa – University of Stirling, United Kingdom
  • Bogdan Paşaniuc – University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States
  • Luca Peruzzotti Jametti – University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
  • Dan Simovici – University of Massachusetts, Boston, United States
  • George Vassiliou – University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
  • Darrell Whitley – Colorado State University, Fort Collins, United States
  • Daniela Zaharie – West University of Timișoara, Romania

ECODAM 2025 Programme

Monday, June 16

Ferdinand Hall, Building A

  • 15:00 – 15:30 Registration
  • 15:30 – 16:30 Daniela Zaharie (West University of Timișoara): Evolution and Learning for Dispatching Rules Discovery
  • 16:30 – 17:30 Panel discussion – The Human Factor: Ethics, Opportunities, and Challenges of LLMs in PhD Studies

Tuesday, June 17

Senate Hall, Building A

  • 9:00 – 9:30 Registration
  • 9:30 – 10:15 Opening Session: 20 years with ECODAM
  • 10:30 – 11:30 Kenneth DeJong (George Mason University): Understanding Co-Evolutionary Algorithms
  • 11:30 – 12:30 Darrell Whitley (Colorado State University): Genetic Algorithms, Graybox Optimization and the Power of Recombination
  • 15:00 – 16:00 Gabriela Ochoa (University of Stirling, UK): Illuminating Optimisation Trajectories
  • 16:00 – 17:00 Bogdan Paşaniuc (University of Pennsylvania): Polygenic Risk Scores for Genomic Medicine: Promises and Challenges
  • 17:15 – 18:30 PhD students: 3-minute thesis presentations

Wednesday, June 18

Senate Hall, Building A

  • 9:30 – 10:30 Liviu Dinu (University of Bucharest): On the hidden variables of the natural languages similarity
  • 10:30 – 11:30 Dan Simovici (University of Massachussets, Boston): The Curse and Blessings of Dealing with High-Dimensional Data in Machine Learning
  • 11:45 – 12:45 Sorin Istrail (Brown University): The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in Genome-Wide Association Studies and the Search for Genomic Determinants of Disease
  • 15:00 – 16:00 Luca Peruzzotti Jametti (University of Cambridge): Targeting Microglial Metabolic Dysfunction to Halt Chronic Central Nervous System Inflammation
  • 16:30 – 17:30 George Vassiliou (University of Cambridge): Clonal haematopoiesis and leukaemia prevention
  • 17:30 – 19:00 Guided tour of Iasi City

Thursday, June 19 – Satelite Workshop: Applied Machine Learning/Bioinformatics

Ferdinand Hall, Building A

  • 09:30 – 10:00 Andi Munteanu (PhD student jointly supervised with Prof H. Luchian and Prof L. Ciortuz, UAIC and Research Assistant in the Core Bioinformatics group): StarLng 2.0: Stability and robustness assessment of single-cell clustering
  • 10:00 – 10:30 Rafael Kollyfas (Research Assistant in the Core Bioinformatics group): Flufftail 2.0: Unveiling Gene Regulatory Network Dynamics through Fuzzy Clustering of Single-Cell RNAseq Data
  • 10:30 – 11:00 Miguel Larraz (PhD student jointly supervised with Dr V. Kosmoliaptsis, U Cambridge): Computational Analysis of Liver Organoid Self-Organization: Trajectory Modeling, Clustering Stability, and Gene Network Reconstruction
  • 11:30 – 12:00 Friedrich-Maximilian Weberling (PhD student, jointly supervised with Prof Florian Hollfelder, Dept Biochemistry, U Cambridge): Crécerelle: Integrating gene expression and transcript usage analysis through multi-modal deep generative models
  • 12:00 – 12:30 Eleanor Williams (MRC-iCASE PhD student, jointly supervised with Dr Jennifer Tan, Astra Zeneca): Integrating multiple modalities in spatial context
  • 12:30 – 13:00 Floris Roos (University of Antwerp; former post-doc in the Vallier and Mohorianu labs): Human foetal organoid atlas for studying development
  • 14:30 – 15:00 Cristian Bulgaru (Research Assistant in the Core Bioinformatics group): Canard2.0: Co-expression ATAC and RNA dynamics (challenges of assessing chromatin openness on single-cell data)
  • 15:00 – 15:30 Şerban Doncean (intern in the Core Bioinformatics group and MSc student jointly supervised with Prof L Ciortuz): FALCON: Functional Analysis / Learning of Corrected Omics via (regulatory) Networks
  • 16:00 – 16:45 Irina Mohorianu (Head of Bioinformatics/ Scientific Computing @ CSCI, Head of the CORE BioInformatics group, University of Cambridge): RoSignOL: robust signature of Life
  • 17:00 – 17:30 Closing session