Established in 2016, the SIGEVO Chair Lecture is a series of lectures sponsored by SIGEVO, to take place on the last day of the GECCO conference. It recognizes influencial researchers in the field.

2024 SIGEVO chair lecture in Melbourne and online

Coevolution in Natural and Artificial Systems
Una-May O'Reilly. MIT, USA.
The talk can be accessed online on our youtube channel

2023 SIGEVO chair lecture in Lisboa and online

Evolutionary Computation Evolving
Ken de Jong. George Mason University, USA.
The talk can be accessed online on our youtube channel

2022 SIGEVO chair lecture in Boston and online

An Evolutionary Optimizer's Path to Success and Some Rocket Science Beyond It
Erik Goodman. Michigan State University, USA.
The talk can be accessed online through the ACM GECCO whova platform

2021 SIGEVO chair lecture in Lille/online

Why AI is Harder Than We Think
Melanie Mitchell. Santa Fe Institute, USA.
The talk can be accessed through the ACM SIGEVO channel on youtube

2020 SIGEVO chair lecture in Cancun/online

Removing Randomness from Evolutionary Algorithms
Darrell Whitley. Colorado State University, USA.
The talk can be accessed through the online system of GECCO 2020
For an interview with Darrell on how it feels to become the first ACM Fellow for his contributions to EC look at his interview in the SIGEVO newsletter

2019 SIGEVO chair lecture in Prague

Evolution, Robotics and the somersaulting spider
Ingo Rechenberg. TU Berlin, Germany.

2018 SIGEVO chair lecture in Kyoto

On Becoming a Reflective Practitioner
David E. Goldberg. ThreeJoy Associates, Big Beacon, and University of Illinois (Emeritus)

2017 SIGEVO chair lecture in Berlin

Curious and Creative Machines
Hod Lipson. Columbia University, New York, US
A summary of the talk can be found in the SIGEvolution newslettter

2016 SIGEVO chair lecture in Denver

The Biology of Software
Stephanie Forrest. The University of New Mexico, USA
A summary of the talk can be found in the SIGEVOlution newsletter