Dr. Jialin LIUResearch Assistant ProfessorOptimization and Learning LabSouthern University of Science and Technology (China)Email : liujl@sustc.edu.cnhttp://www.liujialin.tech

ProfileI’m a Research Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of SouthernUniversity of Science and Technology (SUSTech), China. Before joining SUSTech, I was a Postdoctoral Re-search Associate at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL, UK) and one of the founding members ofthe Game AI research group created in August 2017. Between March 2016 and July 2017, I was a SeniorResearch Officer at the Games and AI research group of University of Essex (UoE, UK). I received my Ph.D.Degree in Computer Science from the Inria Saclay and the Université Paris-Saclay (France) in December2015 and a Master degree in Bioinformatics and Biostatistics from the École Polytechnique and the Univer-sité Paris-Sud (France) in 2013.

Research interestsMeta-heuristics, Noisy Optimisation, Algorithm Portfolio, AI and Games (General Game Playing, AI-assistedGame Design, Portfolio for Adversarial Games)

EducationDec 2015 Ph.D in Computer Science, supervised by Olivier Teytaud and Marc Schoenauer.

Dissertation : Portfolio methods in uncertain contexts (in English).Team TAO, Inria Saclay, Université Paris Saclay, Paris Saclay, France.

Jan 2013 Master’s degree in Bioinformatics and Biostatistics.The reconstruction of molecules with new functions using artificial simulations by directedevolution (in French).Université Paris-Sud & École Polytechnique, Orsay, France.

Sept 2012 Engineer’s degree (=Master) in Computer Science (Network, Artificial Intelligence).Polytech’Paris-Sud, Orsay, France.

Jul 2010 Bachelor’s degree in Optical & Electronic Information.Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan, China.

TeachingUniversity of Essex, UK (in English) :2016-17 CE881 : Mobile & Social Application Programming, Master in CSEE (supervisor).2016-17 CE810 : AI Informed Game Design, Master and IGGI PhD program, CSEE (co-supervisor).2015-16 CE810 : AI Informed Game Design, Master and IGGI PhD program, CSEE (co-supervisor).

Different schools and universities of Université Paris-Saclay, France (in French, 128 hours) :2014-15 Operational Research, 1st-year of Master in Computer Science, Université Paris-Sud.2014-15 Computer Networks, 1st-year of Master in Computer Science, Université Paris-Sud.2014-15 Database, L3 in Computer Science, Université Paris-Sud.2014-15 Java project, L2 in Computer Science, Université Paris-Sud, France.2013-14 Computer Networks, 1st-year of Master in Computer Science, Université Paris-Sud.2013-14 Computer Networks, 4th-year of Engineering in Computer Science, Polytech’Paris-Sud.2013-14 Computer and Internet Certificate, Université Paris-Sud.

PhD studentsIvan Bravi, 1st year PhD student (external supervisor)Kamolwan Kunanusont, 1st year PhD student (3rd supervisor)Chiara F. Sironi, visiting PhD student

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Academic & Industrial Projects and Collaborations• Energy Planning (2013-2015) An ADEME project, POST (“Plateforme d’Optimisation des Super-grids Transcontinentaux”), which is a collaboration between Inria (France) and Artelys (France), a companyspecialised in optimisation, decision-support and modelling. Besides the research part, I also participatedin improving Metis, platform developed by Inria and Artelys, specialised in the optimisation and modellingin energy investment problem. Some zero-sum matrix games have also been used as test problems in thisproject.• “EverydayTravelApp” (2016-2017) Collaboration with the Essex County Council and Visteon for de-veloping mobile applications on both iOS and Android platforms, which allow users to view travel conditionsacross their preferred modes of travel for their highlighted journeys and places, taking into account the statusof the traffic (e.g. delay caused by incidents), and propose alternative travel choices.• AI-Assisted Game Design (since 2016) Automatic game parameter tuning and evaluation usingblack-box noisy optimisation algorithms, such as Evolution Algorithms and some resampling methods. Col-laboration with Prof. Simon Lucas (Queen Mary University of London, UK) and Prof. Julian Togelius (NewYork University, USA).• General Video Game Playing (since 2016) Game AIs for general video game playing, testing on awide range of single-player and a mix of 2-player cooperative and competitive games using the General VideoGame AI (GVGAI) platform, given or without forward model.• Single-Player GVGAI Learning Framework (since 2017) The Single-Player Learning is based onthe GVGAI framework. Different from the planning tracks, no forward model is given to the agent, thus, nosimulation of games is possible. The agent does still have access to the current game state (objects in thecurrent game state), as in the planning tracks. The Single-Player GVGAI Learning Framework provides agood testbed with hundreds games for testing reinforcement learning algorithms.

Scientific ActivitiesConferences Competition Chair at the IEEE CEC19.

Program Co-Chair at the IEEE’s 2018 Computational Intelligence and GamesConference (CIG18).Co-Chair of Special Session on Computational Intelligence and Games at theIEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC17, WCCI18, and CEC19).Competition Chair at the 2018 International Conference on the Foundations ofDigital Games (FDG18).

Competition Organiser of the annual General Video Game AI Learning Competition.Workshop Co-Organiser of the 2015 Workshop on Open Power Systems, Paris, France.

Co-Organiser of Indema2015, Lyon, France.PC member IJCAI, GECCO, IEEE CEC, IEEE CIG, SEAL, ACG, AIIDE, CGW, etc.Journal reviewer IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games (TCIAIG).

IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation (TEVC).IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics (IEEE SMC).IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence (TETCI)

Editor Special Issue on “Game Competition Frameworks for Research and Education" ofIEEE Transactions on Games (ToG), former TCIAIG.

Roles in the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (IEEE CIS)

Since 2017 Chair of the Student Games-Based Competition Sub-Committee (SGBC).Since 2016 Vice-Chair of the Games Technical Committee (GTC).Since 2018 Vice-Chair of the Webinars Sub-Committee.Since 2018 Council member of the Student Activities Sub-Committee.Since 2017 Council member of the Young Professionals Sub-Committee.Since 2015 Council member of the Women in Computational Intelligence Sub-Committee (WCI).

LanguagesChinese (native language), French, English

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Journal Publications1. PSO-based Fuzzy Markup Language for Student Learning Performance Evaluation and

Educational Application, Chang-Shing Lee, Mei-Hui Wang, Chi-Chiang Wang, Olivier Teytaud,Jialin Liu, Su-Wei Lin, Pi-Hsia Hung. Submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems journal(TFS).

2. The 2016 Two-Player GVGAI Competition, Raluca D. Gaina, Adrien Couëtoux, Dennis J.N.J.Soemers, Mark H.M. Winands, Tom Vodopivec, Florian Kirchgeßner, Jialin Liu, Simon M. Lucas andDiego Pérez-Liébana. Submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI inGames (TCIAIG), 2017.

3. Pac-Man Conquers Academia : Two Decades of Research Using a Classic Arcade Game,Philipp Rohlfshagen, Jialin Liu, Diego Perez-Liebana and Simon M. Lucas. IEEE Transactions onComputational Intelligence and AI in Games (TCIAIG), 2017.

4. Algorithm Portfolios for Noisy Optimization, Marie-Liesse Cauwet, Jialin Liu, Baptiste Rozière,Olivier Teytaud. Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence (AMAI), 76(1-2), 143-172, 2016.

5. Simple and Cumulative Regret for Continuous Noisy Optimization, Sandra Astete-Morales,Marie-Liesse Cauwet, Jialin Liu, Olivier Teytaud. Theoretical Computer Science (TCS), 617, 12-27,2016.

6. Strategic Choices in Optimization, Cheng-Wei Chou, Ping-Chiang Chou, Jean-Joseph Christophe,Adrien Couetoux, Pierre De Freminville, Nicolas Galichet, Chang-Shing Lee, Jialin Liu, David LupienSaint-Pierre, Michele Sebag, Olivier Teytaud, Mei-Hui Wang, Li-Wen Wu and Shi-Jim Yen. Journal ofInformation Science and Engineering (JISE), 30(3), 727-747, 2014.

Conference Publications7. Deep reinforcement learning in the General Video Game AI framework, Ruben Rodriguez

Torrado, Philip Bontrager, Julian Togelius, Jialin Liu and Diego Perez Liebana. 2018 IEEE Compu-tational Intelligence and Games Conference (CIG), 2018.

8. Shallow decision-making analysis in General Video Game Playing, Ivan Bravi, Diego Perez,Simon Lucas and Jialin Liu. 2018 IEEE Computational Intelligence and Games Conference (CIG),2018.

9. Evolving Mario Levels in the Latent Space of a Deep Convolutional Generative Adver-sarial Network, Vanessa Volz, Jacob Schrum, Jialin Liu, Simon M Lucas, Adam Smith, SebastianRisi. Proceedings of the 2018 Annual Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (GECCO).(Best Paper Award)

10. The n-tuple bandit evolutionary algorithm for game agent optimisation, Simon M. Lucas,Jialin Liu, Diego Perez-Liebana. 2018 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC’18), 2018.(Shortlisted for Best Paper Award out of 347 accepted papers)

11. 4.18 Gameplay Evaluation Measures, Vanessa Volz, Dan Ashlock, Simon Colton, Steve Dahlskog,Jialin Liu, Simon M. Lucas, Diego Perez Liebana, Tommy Thompson. Report of Dagstuhl SeminarArtificial and Computational Intelligence in Games : AI-Driven Game Design, p122 2018.

12. 4.1 Game Search Space Design and Representation, Dan Ashlock, Cameron Browne, SimonColton, Amy K Hoover, Jialin Liu, Simon M Lucas, Mark J Nelson, Diego Perez Liebana, SebastianRisi, Jacob Schrum, Adam M Smith, Julian Togelius, Vanessa Volz. , Report of Dagstuhl SeminarArtificial and Computational Intelligence in Games : AI-Driven Game Design, p38, 2018.

13. Direct Model Predictive Control : A Theoretical and Numerical Analysis, Marie-LiesseCauwet, Jŕmie Decock, Jialin Liu and Olivier Teytaud. 2018 Power Systems Computation Conference(PSCC), 2018.

14. Self-Adaptive MCTS for General Video Game Playing, Chiara F. Sironi, Jialin Liu, DiegoPérez-Liébana, Raluca D. Gaina, Ivan Bravi, Simon M. Lucas and Mark H.M. Winands. 21st EuropeanConference on the Applications of Evolutionary Computation, 2018.

15. Efficient Noisy Optimisation with the Sliding Window Compact Genetic Algorithm, SimonM. Lucas, Jialin Liu and Diego Pérez-Liébana. IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence(IEEE SSCI), 2017.

16. Evolving Game Skill-Depth using General Video Game AI Agents, Jialin Liu, Julian Toge-lius, Diego Pérez-Liébana and Simon M. Lucas. IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (IEEECEC), 2017.

17. The N-Tuple Bandit Evolutionary Algorithm for Game Design, Kamolwan Kunanusont, Ra-luca D. Gaina, Jialin Liu, Diego Perez-Liebana and Simon M. Lucas. IEEE Congress on EvolutionaryComputation (IEEE CEC), 2017.

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18. Bandit-Based Random Mutation Hill-Climbing, Jialin Liu, Diego Perez-Liebana and SimonM. Lucas. IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (IEEE CEC), 2017.

19. Analysis of Vanilla Rolling Horizon Evolution Parameters in General Video Game Playing,Raluca D. Gaina, Jialin Liu, Diego Pérez-Liébana and Simon M. Lucas. 20th European Conferenceon the Applications of Evolutionary Computation, pp. 418-434. Springer, 2017.

20. Rolling Horizon Coevolutionary Planning for Two-Player Video Games, Jialin Liu, DiegoPérez-Liébana and Simon M. Lucas. The Computer science and Electronic Engineering Conference(CEEC), 2016.

21. Learning opening books in partially observable games : using random seeds in PhantomGo, Tristan Cazenave, Jialin Liu, Fabien Teytaud, Olivier Teytaud. IEEE Computational Intelligenceand Games Conference (CIG), 2016.

22. Fast seed-learning algorithms for games, Jialin Liu, Oliver Teytaud, Tristan Cazenave. The 9thInternational Conference on Computers and Games (CG), 2016.

23. Portfolio methods in uncertain contexts, Jialin Liu, Ph.D dissertation, 2015.24. Variance Reduction in Population-Based Optimization : Application to Unit Commit-

ment, Jean-Joseph Christophe, Jérémie Decock, Jialin Liu, Oliver Teytaud. Biennial InternationalConference on Artificial Evolution (EA), Springer LNCS, 2015.

25. The rectangular seeds of Domineering, Atari-Go and Breakthrough, Tristan Cazenave, JialinLiu, Olivier Teytaud. IEEE Computational Intelligence and Games Conference (CIG), 2015.

26. Item Response Theory with Fuzzy Markup Language for Parameter Estimation and Vali-dation, Mei-Hui Wang, Chi-Shiang Wang, Chang-Shing Lee, Olivier Teytaud, Jialin Liu, Su-Wei Linand Pi-Hsia Hung. The 2015 IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE), 2015.

27. Differential Evolution for Strongly Noisy Optimization : Use 1.01n Resamplings at Ite-ration n and Reach the − 1

2 Slope, Shih-Yuan Chiu, Ching-Nung Lin, Jialin Liu, Tsan-ChengSu, Fabian Teytaud, Olivier Teytaud and Shi-Jim Yen. The 2015 IEEE Congress on EvolutionaryComputation (IEEE CEC), 2015.

28. Nash Reweighting of Monte Carlo Simulations : Tsumego, David L. St-Pierre, Jialin Liu andOlivier Teytaud. The 2015 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (IEEE CEC), 2015.

29. Variance Reduction in Population-Based Optimization : Application to Unit Commit-ment, Jialin Liu and Olivier Teytaud. Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO),2015.

30. Sparse Binary Zero-Sum Games, David Auger, Jialin Liu, Sylvie Ruette, David L. St-Pierre andOlivier Teytaud. The 6th Asian Conference on Machine Learning (ACML), 2014.

31. Differential Evolution Algorithm Applied to Non-Stationary Bandit Problem, David L.St-Pierre and Jialin Liu. The 2014 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (IEEE CEC), 2014.

32. Meta online learning : experiments on a unit commitment problem, Jialin Liu and OlivierTeytaud. The 22th European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks (ESANN), 2014.

33. A Mathematically Derived Number of Resamplings for Noisy Optimization, Jialin Liu,David L. St-Pierre and Olivier Teytaud. Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO),2014.

34. Algorithm Portfolios for Noisy Optimization : Compare Solvers Early, Marie-Liesse Cauwet,Jialin Liu and Olivier Teytaud. Learning and Intelligent OptimizatioN Conference (LION), 2014.

35. Log-log Convergence for Noisy Optimization, Sandra Astete Morales, Jialin Liu and OlivierTeytaud. Biennial International Conference on Artificial Evolution (EA), 2013.

36. Noisy optimization convergence rates, Sandra Astete Morales, Jialin Liu and Olivier Teytaud.Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO), 2013.