Dr. rer. nat. Dipl.-Math. Michael Hellwig

I am a Senior Researcher in the field of Optimization and Director of the Josef Ressel Centre for Robust Decision Making at the Research Centre Business Informatics of FH Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences. I have received a Diploma in Mathematics from the Technical University of Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany, in 2009 and the Ph.D. degree (Dr. rer. nat.) in Computer Science from Ulm University, Ulm, Germany in 2017.

My work is concerned with theoretical and practical aspects of Evolutionary Computation and Machine Learning. On the theoretical part, I am working the performance analysis of Evolutionary Algorithms (EA). In particular, I am investigating the behavior of (meta-)ES on noisy and/or constrained optimization problems. My interests involve the theoretical description of the related dynamical evolutionary system, as well as the design of new algorithm variants that successfully deal with specific difficulties in the mentioned environments. On the application side, my priority is the transfer of theoretical results to practice, i.e. the development of algorithms for industrial real-world problems. In this context, I am especially engaged in investigating the synergy potential of concepts from Machine Learning and Evolutionary Computation to reduce the impact of uncertainties on real-world processes. Moreover, the combination of optimization approaches with engineering design automation tasks has become a recent domain of competence.

In addition to my research activities, I teach Mathematics, Statistics, and Machine Learning courses in different study programs at FH Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences and at the University of Liechtenstein.