Available Host Institutions 2026

List of host institutions for the SPECIES Scholarship programme in 2026. Details about the supervisor, research group, available projects, and other relevant information, is provided as a PDF document.

Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya

  • Location: Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain (Website)
  • Supervisor: Adrián García Riber (LinkedIn)
  • Project:
    1. Asteroid Sonification
  • More information: host proposal

Jönköping University

  • Location: Jönköping University, Jönköping, Sweden (Website)
  • Supervisor: Alexandros Tzanetos (Homepage)
  • Project:
    1. Evolutionary approaches with unique algorithmic components
  • More information: host proposal

Jožef Stefan Institue

  • Location: Jožef Stefan Institute (JSI), Ljubljana, Slovenia (Website)
  • Supervisors: Tome Eftimov (Homepage), Eva Tuba (Homepage) and Ana Gjorgejvikj (Homepage)
  • Project:
    1. Smart-sized Benchmarking for Bio-Inspired Optimization Algorithms
  • More information: host proposal

Lancaster University Leipzig

  • Location: Lancaster University Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany (Website)
  • Supervisor: John Alasdair Warwicker (Homepage)
  • Project:
    1. Analysing Evolutionary Local Branching Matheuristics for Combinatorial Optimisation Problems
  • More information: host proposal

McMaster University

  • Location: McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada (Website)
  • Supervisor: Stephen Kelly (Homepage)
  • Project:
    1. Modularity, Hierarchy, and Memory in Developmental Genetic Programming
  • More information: host proposal

Michigan State University

  • Location: Michigan State University, Lansing, Michigan, United States (Website)
  • Supervisor: Wolfgang Banzhaf (Homepage)
  • Project:
    1. Improving Genetic Programming Classification through Neutral Fitness Landscapes
  • More information: host proposal

Nova Information Management School (NOVA IMS)

  • Location: NOVA Information Management School (NOVA IMS), Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal (Website)
  • Supervisor: Leonardo Vanneschi (Homepage)
  • Project:
    1. Hybrid Evolutionary and Transformer Models for Symbolic Regression
  • More information: host proposal

RIKEN Center for Computational Science

  • Location: RIKEN Center for Computational Science, Tokyo, Japan (Website)
  • Supervisor: João Eduardo Batista (LinkedIn)
  • Project:
    1. EC-driven search strategies targeted at different levels
  • More information: host proposal

RWTH Aachen University

  • Location: RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany (Website)
  • Supervisors: Roman Kalkreuth (LinkedIn) and Holger H. Hoos (Homepage)
  • Project:
    1. Comparing LLM-Driven and Traditional Genetic Programming Search Strategies
  • More information: host proposal

Toulouse Capitole University

  • Location: Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse (IRIT), Toulouse Capitole University, Toulouse, France (Website)
  • Supervisors: Yuri Cossich Lavinas (Homepage), Sylvain Cussat-Blanc (Homepage) and Giorgia Nadizar (Homepage)
  • Project:
    1. Spatial computing of Cartesian Genetic Programming and its evolution
  • More information: host proposal

University of Bucharest

  • Location: University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania (Website)
  • Supervisor: Alexandru Popa (Homepage)
  • Projects:
    1. Student-proposed research topic in bio-inspired AI or optimization
    2. Collaborative project with other PhD students
    3. Independent research on bio-inspired metaheuristics for hard optimization problems
  • More information: host proposal

University of Coimbra

  • Location: Centre for Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra (CISUC), Coimbra, Portugal (Website)
  • Supervisors: Sérgio M. Rebelo (Homepage) and Tiago Martins (Homepage)
  • Project:
    1. Evolutionary Computational Design for Graphic or 3D Creative Systems
  • More information: host proposal

University of Extremadura (1)

  • Location: University of Extremadura, Mérida, Extremadura, Spain (Website)
  • Supervisor: Francisco Fernández de Vega (LinkedIn)
  • Projects:
    1. Evolutionary Approach to SATB harmonization
    2. FedGP: New Genetic Programming approach to Federated Learning
  • More information: host proposal

University of Extremadura (2)

  • Location: University of Extremadura, Mérida, Extremadura, Spain (Website)
  • Supervisor: Josefa Díaz Álvarez (Homepage)
  • Projects:
    1. Automatic classification of Mexican wood varieties
    2. Optimizing the construction of triangular and honeycomb-type lattices with tunable spatial correlations
  • More information: host proposal

University of Granada

  • Location: University of Granada, Granada, Spain (Website)
  • Supervisor: JJ Merelo (Homepage)
  • Projects:
    1. Procedural Game Generation
    2. Other topics related to digital humanities, art history, and evolutionary computation
  • More information: host proposal

University of Lisbon

  • Location: LASIGE Computer Science and Engineering Research Centre, Faculty of Sciences of the Universiy of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal (Website)
  • Supervisor: Sara Silva (Homepage)
  • Projects:
    1. LLMs as Symbolic Variation Operators in Genetic Programming
    2. Issues of overfitting and model interpretability
    3. Other GP-based proposals related to interpretability, feature engineering, and/or model robustness
  • More information: host proposal

University of New South Wales

  • Location: School of Art & Design at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (Website)
  • Supervisor: Oliver R. Bown (Homepage)
  • Project:
    1. Music performance and Creative Arts Systems that combine Machine Learning with Evolutionary Computation to explore new forms of creation
  • More information: host proposal

University of Southampton

  • Location: University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom (Website)
  • Supervisor: Bismark Singh (Homepage)
  • Project:
    1. Evolutionary Algorithms for Fair Resource Allocation and Facility Location
  • More information: host proposal

University of Southern Denmark

  • Location: University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Odense, Denmark (Website)
  • Supervisor: Marco Chiarandini (Homepage)
  • Project:
    1. Research on Education Management Tools
    2. Developement of general purpose, adaptive heuristic and nature inspired solvers
    3. Other projects in the field of continuous or discrete optimization
  • More information: host proposal

University of Stirling (1)

  • Location: University of Stirling, Stirling, Scotland, United Kingdom (Website)
  • Supervisor: Gabriela Ochoa (Homepage)
  • Projects:
    1. Understanding Quantum Optimisation Formulations
    2. Understanding Multi-objective Problems
    3. Understanding Complex Search Spaces and Algorithms
  • More information: host proposal

University of Stirling (1)

  • Location: University of Stirling, Stirling, Scotland, United Kingdom (Website)
  • Supervisor: Hazrat ALI (Homepage)
  • Project:
    1. Neuroevolution of variable length denoising operators for diversity preserving medical image generation
  • More information: host proposal

University of Trento

  • Location: University of Trento (UNITN), Trento, Italy (Website)
  • Supervisor: Giovanni Iacca (Homepage)
  • Projects:
    1. Evolutionary learning of interpretable models
    2. Hybridization of deep reinforcement learning and metaheuristics
    3. Evolution of network protocols
    4. Evolution of communication using interpretable agents
    5. Evolution federated learning
  • More information: host proposal

University of Trieste

  • Location: University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy (Website)
  • Supervisor: Eric Medvet (Homepage)
  • Project:
    1. Improving the effectiveness of evolutionary program synthesis
  • More information: host proposal