It is a pleasure to invite you to the 5th International Conference on Variable Neighborhood Search (IC on VNS), which will be held in Ouro Preto, Brazil, on Oct 2-4, 2017.

website: http://vnsconference.ufop.br/

VNS is a metaheuristic based on systematic changes in the neighborhood structure within a search, for solving optimization problems and related tasks. The main goal of the IC on VNS is to provide a stimulating environment in which researchers coming from various scientific fields can share and discuss their knowledge, expertise and ideas related to the VNS Metaheuristic and its applications.

Important Dates
May 31, 2017 Paper and/or Abstract submission
July 03, 2017 Acceptance notice
August 01, 2017 Early registration ends
August 01, 2017 Submission of papers for the Proceedings ends
September 04, 2017 Preliminary program schedule notice
October 02, 2017 - October 4, 2017 Conference date


Conference proceedings and Book of Abstracts:
All papers accepted for presentation will be published in a special issue of Electronic Notes in Discrete Mathematics (ENDM) journal. ENDN is indexed by SCOPUS with the following indexes: SNIP: 0.389; SJR: 0.320; SiteScore: 0.350.

Participants are also allowed to send just an abstract of their presentation. All the abstracts from accepted papers/talks will be published in the book of abstracts.

Publication in Special Issues:
Special issues of International International Transactions in Operational Research (ITOR, Impact factor 1.255 ISSN 1475-3995) and Yugoslav Journal of Operations Research (YUJOR, Impact factor 0.53 ISSN 0354-0243) will be dedicated to significantly extended and improved versions of the papers presented at the VNS 2017 conference. However, submission will also be open for papers which were not initially presented at the conference.

Conference themes - Theory and methodology:
Theoretical or empirical analysis of VNS
New variants of deterministic and stochastic VNS
Continuous global VNS
Convergent VNS methods
Metheuristics and VNS
Formulation space VNS
Multi-objective VNS
Parallel VNS
VNS hybrids

Conference themes - Applications:
Mixed integer programming
Graphs, communication networks
Clustering, data mining, location
Inventory, routing, supply chains
Packing and covering
Discovery sciences
Other real world problems

Submission instructions:
Submissions can consist of:
A short abstract (up to half page). Accepted abstracts will appear in a short book of abstracts (without ISBN).
A paper of up to eight pages prepared using ENDM LaTeX macro files (which you can download from here ). Accepted papers will appear in a Electronic Notes in Discrete Mathematics volume and their abstracts will apear in the short abstracts book.

Paper submission:
The papers must be submitted through the EasyChair platform:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=vns2017

Abstract submission:
The abstracts must be submitted through the EasyChair platform:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=vns2017
In order to include your abstract in the book of abstracts of the conference, it must be carefully checked to avoid any English mistake. Additionally, abstract length must be set to a number of words between 150 and 200. Finally, we encourage you to review the affiliations and names of the authors A short acknowledgement is welcome under your abstract if necessary. Finally, we encourage you to carefully review the affiliations and names of the authors.

Questions?
Email: vnsconference2017@gmail.com

Organizing Committee:
General Chair:
Nenad Mladenovic - Mathematical Institute SANU and JUPIM, Serbia.

Honorary Chair:
Pierre Hansen - GERAD, Montréal, Canada

Conference Chairs:
Haroldo Gambini Santos - UFOP, Brazil
Vitor Nazário Coelho - UFF, Brazil
Local Committee Chairs:

Local Committee Chairs:
Puca Huachi Vaz Penna - UFOP, Brazil
Marcone Jamilson Freitas Souza - UFOP, Brazil
Rafael A.M. Gomes - UFOP, Brazil

Proceedings and Organizing Chairs:
Igor Machado Coelho - UERJ, Brazil
Thays Aparecida de Oliveira - Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain

Local Staff:
Minghe Hu - UFOP, Brazil


Program Committee
Abdulaziz Alkandari -Kuwait Insitute, Kuwait
Alexandre Martins - UFOP, Brazil
Alysson M. Costa - University of Melbourne, Australia
Anand Subramanian - UFPB, Brazil
André Gustavo - University of Melbourne, Australia
Andréa Cynthia Santos - Université de Technologie de Troyes, France
Angelo Sifaleras - University of Macedonia, Greece
Belén Melián - University La Laguna, Spain
Bruno Nazário Coelho - UFOP, Brazil
Celso C. Ribeiro - UFF, Brazil
Christian Blum - Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Spain
Daniel Aloise - UFRN, Brazil
Eduardo G. Pardo - Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Emilio Carrizosa - University of Sevilla, Spain
Felipe M. Müller - UFSM, Brazil
Frederico Gadelha Guimaraes - UFMG, Brazil
Geraldo Robson Mateus - UFMG, Brazil
Gilles Caporossi - HEC Montréal, Canada
Günther Raidl - TU Wien, Austria
Gustavo Semaan - UFF, Brazil
Helena Ramalhinho Lourenço - Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
José A. Moreno-Perez - University of La Laguna, Spain
Julio Brito - University of La Laguna, Spain
Luciana Buriol - UFRGS, Brazil
Lucidio Cabral - UFPB, Brazil
Luiz Satoru Ochi - UFF, Brazil
Marcus Ritt - UFRGS, Brazil
Martin Ravetti - UFMG, Brazil
Mauricio Resende - Amazon, USA
Miri Cohen - Braude College of Engineering, Israel
Olinto Araújo - UFSM, Brazil
Patrick Siarry - University of East Paris Créteil Val de Marne, France
Reza Tavakkoli-Moghaddam - University of Tehran, Iran
Rosiane de Freitas - UFAM/ICOMP, Brazil
Sebastián Urrutia - UFMG, Brazil
Sérgio Ricardo de Souza - CEFET MG, Brazil
Simone Martins - UFF, Brazil
Thibaut Lust - Univ. Pierre Marie Curie, France
Thibaut Vidal - PUC-RIO, Brazil
Thomas Stützle - TU Darmstadt, Germany
Tulio Toffolo - UFOP, Brazil / KU Leuven, Belgium
Yuri Kochetov - Novosibirsk, Russia

Ouro Preto

Ouro Preto is located about 100/km from the capital of Minas Gerais state, Belo Horizonte, in a region which is a cultural center with various well-known poets, musicians, and Brazilian visual artists. Due to its architecture, composed by the biggest group of Baroque works in Brazil, Ouro Preto was the first Brazilian town entitled as World Cultural Heritage by UNESCO in 1980.
Born from explorer Antônio Dias’s discovery of “ouro preto” (black gold) in the Tripuí riverbed in the 17 th century, the history of the city could be conflated with Brazil’s. Ouro Preto enjoyed its gilded age during the Ciclo do Ouro , when it was the stage for the Inconfidência Mineira, a separatist movement led by Tiradentes and motivated by the Portuguese crown’s high taxation of gold.
The decline of Ouro Preto’s mines, at the end of the 18 th Century, led much of the population to abandon the city. This migration, on the other hand, led to the preservation of its historical center, the largest example of Baroque architecture in the world. Especially noteworthy are the works of Aleijadinho and Master Ataíde.
Rich in history, culture, education, and entertainment, the town has an intense cultural agenda, organized in partnership with UFOP and some of the most important artistic and cultural events of the country.
Inspiration for poets and artists, for mysterious legends and stories that have persisted generation after generation among its inhabitants, Ouro Preto is an icon survived in Tomás Antônio Gonzaga’s poetry, in Guignard’s canvases and in the imagination of all who have the chance to visit.