News

• IEEE Computational Intelligence Society: Emergent Technologies Task Force on Memetic Computing[click to check]
• Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice: Benchmarking Transfer Evolutionary Optimization[click to check]
• CEC-2025 Special Session on Memetic Computing[click to submit]
• CEC-2025 Competition on “Evolutionary Multi-task Optimization”[click to submit]
• NEW Book！《Optinformatics in Evolutionary Learning and Optimization》 Springer Nature.
  
• Multifactorial Evolution: Towards Evolutionary Multitasking, Benchmark Problems, Publications and Source Codes Downloads.

Experiences

Research Interests

• Computational and Artificial intelligence, Multi-Agent Learning Systems, Evolutionary Multitasking, Transfer Optimization

Honors and Awards

Invited Reviewer

• IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation (TEVC)
• IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics (TCYB)
• IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence (TETCI)
• IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (TNNLS)
• IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine (CIM)
• Chinese Journal of Computers
• IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica
• IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems (TSMC)
• Journal of Computer Science
• Journal of Automation
• Memetic Computing, etc

Selected Publications

• Jian Zhuang, Tiantian He, Yaqing Hou*, Yew-Soon Ong, Qiang Zhang*. Learning Dynamic Frame Semantics for Multimodal Sentiment Analysis. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, 2026. (IF: 11.3)
• Dian Meng, Yaoxin Wu, Yaqing Hou*, Zhiguang Cao. PoMtVRS: Preference-Optimized Multi-Task Vehicle Routing Solver with Preference Gating. Proceedings of the Forty-third International Conference on Machine Learning, 2026. (ICML)
• Xu Gui, Hua Yu, Dongsheng Zhou, Yaqing Hou*. LLM-Guided Multiobjective Optimization for Physically-Plausible and Diverse 3D Human Motion Generation. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, 2026. (IF: 12)
• Zhi Cao, Cong Zhang, Yaoxin Wu, Yaqing Hou*, Hongwei Ge*. Mamba-CrossAttention: solving flexible job shop scheduling via sequence modeling and reinforcement learning. Swarm and Evolutionary Computation, 2026. (IF: 8.5)
• Yaqing Hou*, Ning Wang, Zhaoping Yu, David M Bossens, Ying Wu, Qiang Zhang, Yew-Soon Ong. Evolutionary Content Generation via Multimodal LLM-based Fitness Evaluation. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, 2026. (IF: 12)
• Yaqing Hou*, Zhaoping Yu, David M Bossens, Zheng Guo, Ying Wu, Hongwei Ge, Yew-Soon Ong. Evolutionary Heterogeneous Multitasking for Quality Diversity Optimization. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, 2025. (IF: 12)
• Ying Wu, Ziliang Du, Gonglin Yuan, Zhenzhou Tang, Ferrante Neri, Yaqing Hou*. Regularity Model-Driven Large-Scale Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm Based on Dual-Information Offspring Reproduction Strategy. Expert Systems with Applications, 2025. (IF: 7.5)
• Gonglin Yuan, Bing Xue, Mengjie Zhang, Yaqing Hou*. Explaining Fine-Grained Image Classification Using Evolutionary Search and the Stable Diffusion Model. IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence, 2025. (IF: 6.5)
• Dian Meng, Zhiguang Cao, Yaoxin Wu, Yaqing Hou*, Hongwei Ge, Qiang Zhang. EFormer: An Effective Edge-based Transformer for Vehicle Routing Problems. Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2025. (IJCAI)
• Boshen Pan, Yaoxin Wu, Zhiguang Cao, Yaqing Hou*, Guangyu Zou, Qiang Zhang. Preference-based deep reinforcement learning for historical route estimation. Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2025. (IJCAI)
• Dian Meng, Zhiguang Cao, Jie Gao, Yaoxin Wu, Yaqing Hou*. Uniteformer: Unifying node and edge modalities in transformers for vehicle routing problems. The Thirty-ninth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, 2025. (NeurIPS)
• Mengchen Zhao, Yifan Gao, Yaqing Hou*, Xiangyang Li, Pengjie Gu, Zhenhua Dong, Ruiming Tang, Yi Cai. MTRec: Learning to Align with User Preferences via Mental Reward Models. The Thirty-ninth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, 2025. (NeurIPS)
• Hongyu Liu, Hongwei Ge, Yuxuan Liu, Yaqing Hou. Dialogue-Driven Interactive Dynamic Learning for Text-to-Image Person Retrieval. Proceedings of the 33rd ACM International Conference on Multimedia, 2025. (ACM MM)
• Hua Yu, Yaqing Hou*, Shanshan Feng, Dongsheng Zhou, Qiang Zhang. A Spatio-temporal Continuous Network for Stochastic 3D Human Motion Prediction. IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, 2025. (IF: 11.1)
• Sihan Zhou, Yaqing Hou*, Yaoxin Wu, Xiangchao Yu, Liran Zhou, Haiyin Piao, Qiang Zhang. Cooperative Multi-Agent Advice Exchange via Topological Graph Learning. IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems, 2025. (IF: 4.9)
• Yuyang Cui, Ziliang Du, Hongwei Ge, Guangyu Zou, Yaqing Hou*. Multitree Genetic Programming with Spherical-Based Operators for Synthetic Minority Over-Sampling Technique in Unbalanced Data. Swarm and Evolutionary Computation, 2025. (IF: 8.5)
• Yaqing Hou, Jie Kang, Haiyin Piao, Yifeng Zeng, Yew-Soon Ong, Yaochu Jin, Qiang Zhang*. Cooperative Multiagent Learning and Exploration With Min–Max Intrinsic Motivation. IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, 2025. (IF: 10.5)
• Yaqing Hou, Zhaoping Yu, Zheng Guo, Wenbin Pei, Yaoxin Wu, Hongwei Ge*, Bing Xue, Mengjie Zhang. A Group-Based Many-Task Collaborative Optimization Framework for Evolutionary Robots Design. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems, 2025. (IF: 8.7)
• Yaqing Hou, Huiyue Sun, Gonglin Yuan*, Yijing Li, Zifan Che, Hongwei Ge. A Correlation-Guided Cooperative Coevolutionary Method for Feature Selection via Interaction Learning-based Space Division. Swarm and Evolutionary Computation, 2025. (IF: 8.5)
• Hua Yu, Yaqing Hou*, Wenbin Pei, Yew-Soon Ong, Qiang Zhang*. DivDiff: A Conditional Diffusion Model for Diverse Human Motion Prediction. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 2024. (IF: 8.4)
• Hua Yu, Weiming Liu, Jiapeng Bai, Xu Gui, Yaqing Hou*, YewSoon Ong, Qiang Zhang*. Towards Efficient and Diverse Generative Model for Unconditional Human Motion Synthesis. Proceedings of the 32nd ACM International Conference on Multimedia, 2024. (ACM MM)
• Guozhi Tang, Hongwei Ge*, Liang Sun, Yaqing Hou, Mingde Zhao. A Virtual-Sensor Construction Network Based on Physical Imaging for Image Super-Resolution. IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 2024. (IF: 10.8)
• Hongwei Ge, Zhi Zheng, Yaqing Hou*, Xia Wang, Hisao Ishibuchi. Learning to Evolve With Guiding Solutions Generated by Generative Adversarial Network. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, 2024. (IF: 11.7)
• Yaoxin Wu, Mingfeng Fan, Zhiguang Cao, Ruobin Gao, Yaqing Hou*, Guillaume Sartoretti. Collaborative Deep Reinforcement Learning for Solving Multi-Objective Vehicle Routing Problems. Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, 2024. (AAMAS)
• Linwei Chen, Wanshu Fan, Xu Gui, Yaqing Hou, Xin Yang, Qiang Zhang, Xiaopeng Wei, Dongsheng Zhou*. Multilevel Joint Association Networks for Diverse Human Motion Prediction. IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence, 2024. (IF: 5.3)
• Xin He, Hongwei Ge, Yaqing Hou, Jincheng Yu. SAEIR: sequentially accumulated entropy intrinsic reward for cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning with sparse reward. Proceedings of the Thirty-Third International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2024. (IJCAI)
• Zhixiao Sun, Huahua Wu, Yandong Shi, Xiangchao Yu, Yifan Gao, Wenbin Pei, Zhen Yang, Haiyin Piao, Yaqing Hou*. Multi-agent air combat with two-stage graph-attention communication. Neural Computing and Applications, 2023. (IF: 6.0)
• Xuefeng Chen, Liang Feng, Xin Cao, Yifeng Zeng, Yaqing Hou, Zhi Zhang. Budgeted Sequence Submodular Maximization With Uniform and Non-Uniform Costs. IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence, 2023. (IF: 5.3)
• Xia Wang, Hongwei Ge, Naiqiang Zhang, Yaqing Hou, Liang Sun. A universal large-scale many-objective optimization framework based on cultural learning. Applied Soft Computing, 2023. (IF: 8.7)
• Haiyin Piao*, Yue Han, Shaoming He, Chao Yu, Songyuan Fan, Yaqing Hou*, Chengchao Bai, and Li Mo. Spatio-Temporal Relationship Cognitive Learning for Multi-Robot Air Combat. IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems, 2023. (IF: 5.0)
• Hua Yu, Xuanzhe Fan, Yaqing Hou, Wenbin Pei, Hongwei Ge, Xin Yang, Dongsheng Zhou, Qiang Zhang*, Mengjie Zhang. Towards Realistic 3D Human Motion Prediction with A Spatio-temporal Cross-transformer Approach. IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, 2023. (IF: 8.4)
• Yaqing Hou*, Mingyang Sun, Yifeng Zeng, Yew-Soon Ong, Yaochu Jin, Hongwei Ge, Qiang Zhang. Hancock.A Multi-agent Cooperative Learning System with Evolution of Social Roles. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, 2023. (IF: 14.3)
• Yuxuan Liu, Hongwei Ge*, Zhen Wang, Yaqing Hou, and Mingde Zhao. Discriminative Identity-Feature Exploring and Differential Aware Learning for Unsupervised Person Re-Identification. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 2023. (IF: 7.3)
• Mingyang Sun, Mengchen Zhao, Yaqing Hou*, Minglei Li, Huang Xu, Songcen Xu, Jianye Hao. Co-Speech Gesture Synthesis by Reinforcement Learning With Contrastive Pre-Trained Rewards. Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 2023. (CVPR)
• Mingyang Sun, Yaqing Hou*, Jie Kang, Haiyin Piao, Yifeng Zeng, Hongwei Ge, and Qiang Zhang. Improving Cooperative Multi-Agent Exploration via Surprise Minimization and Social Influence Maximization. Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, 2023. (AAMAS)
• Yuxuan Liu, Hongwei Ge*, Zhen Wang, Yaqing Hou, and Mingde Zhao. Clothes-Changing Person Re-identification via Universal Framework with Association and Forgetting Learning. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 2023. (IF: 7.3)
• Yaqing Hou*, Wenkai Zhang, Qian Liu, Hongwei Ge, Jun Meng, Qiang Zhang*, Xiaopeng Wei. Adaptive Kernel Selection Network with Attention Constraint for Surgical Instrument Classification. Neural Computing and Applications, 2022. (IF: 6.0)
• Abhishek Gupta, Lei Zhou*, Yew-Soon Ong, Zefeng Chen, Yaqing Hou. Graph Learning for Fake Review Detection. Half a Dozen Real-World Applications of Evolutionary Multitasking, and More. IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine, 2022. (IF: 9.0)
• Yaqing Hou, Mingyang Sun, Wenxuan Zhu, Yifeng Zeng, Haiyin Piao*, Xuefeng Chen, Qiang Zhang*. Behavior Reasoning for Opponent Agents in Multi-Agent Learning Systems. IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence, 2022. (IF: 5.3)
• Liang Feng, Qingxia Shang, Yaqing Hou*, Kay Chen Tan, Yew-Soon Ong. Multispace Evolutionary Search for Large-Scale Optimization With Applications to Recommender Systems. IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence, 2022.
• Jin Yu, Haiyin Piao*, Yaqing Hou, Li Mo, Xin Yang, Deyun Zhou. DOMA: Deep Smooth Trajectory Generation Learning for Real-Time UAV Motion Planning. Proceedings of the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, 2022.
• Hua Yu, Xuanzhe Fan, Yaqing Hou*, Yi Liu, Cai Kang, Dongsheng Zhou, Qiang Zhang*. Towards Efficient 3d Human Motion Prediction Using Deformable Transformer-Based Adversarial Network. International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2022. (ICRA)
• Yuxuan Liu, Hongwei Ge*, Liang Sun, Yaqing Hou.Complementary Attention-Driven Contrastive Learning with Hard-Sample Exploring for Unsupervised Domain Adaptive Person Re-Id. IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, 2022. (IF: 8.4)
• Yaqing Hou*, Wenkai Zhang, Dongsheng Zhou, Hongwei Ge, Qiang Zhang*, Xiaopeng Wei. Multi-Scale Attention Constraint Network for Fine-Grained Visual Classification. IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo, 2021. (ICME)
• Yaqing Hou*, Hua Yu, Dongsheng Zhou, Pengfei Wang, Hongwei Ge, Jianxin Zhang, Qiang Zhang*. Local-Aware Spatio-Temporal Attention Network With Multi-Stage Feature Fusion for Human Action Recognition. Neural Computing and Applications, 2021. (IF: 5.1)
• Hongwei Ge*, Dongwan Gao, Liang Sun*, Yaqing Hou, Chao Yu, Yuxin Wang, Guozhen Tan. Multi-Agent Transfer Reinforcement Learning with Multi-View Encoder for Adaptive Traffic Signal Control. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2021. (IF: 9.5)
• Yaqing Hou*, Xiangchao Yu, Yifeng Zeng, Ziqi Wei, Haijun Zhang, Hongwei Ge*, Qiang Zhang*. Advances in Memetic Automaton: Toward Human-Like Autonomous Agents in Complex Multi-Agent Learning Problems. IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine, 2021. (IF: 9.8)
• Yaqing Hou*, Yew-Soon Ong, Jing Tang, Yifeng Zeng. Evolutionary Multiagent Transfer Learning with Model-Based Opponent Behavior Prediction. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems, 2021. (IF: 11.4)
• Yaqing Hou, Yew-Soon Ong, Liang Feng, Jacek M. Zurada. An Evolutionary Transfer Reinforcement Learning Framework for Multiagent Systems. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, 2017. (IF: 8.1)
• Yaqing Hou, Yifeng Zeng, Yew-Soon Ong. A Memetic Multi-Agent Demonstration Learning Approach with Behavior Prediction. 15th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, 2016. (AAMAS)