Prof Qingfu Zhang’s research group from Department of Computer Science and Huawei has won 30-day CVRPLib BKS Challenge
25 Feb 2026
The OptVerse-CityU team, a collaboration between Prof Qingfu Zhang’s research group and Huawei, which includes former research staff Dr Fei Liu, research staff Dr Zidong Wang, and PhD students Mr Xin Chen, Mr Qinglong Hu, Mr Shunyu Yao, and Mr Kefeng Zheng, has won the 30-day CVRPLib BKS Challenge.
This prestigious competition challenges teams to produce the best known solutions (BKS) for the large-scale Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP), and the OptVerse-CityU team succeeded in generating BKS for 51 out of 100 instances. Notably, their algorithm incorporates key components designed by the Evolution of Heuristics (EoH) system, marking a significant milestone as the first algorithm with AI-designed elements to win in this rigorous contest. Developed by Professor Qingfu Zhang’s research group and Huawei, the EoH system (its first version was called AEL) showcases innovative integration of evolutionary search and large language models.