My MSc advisor wrote a big book on multi-objective evolutionary optimization. http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780387332543 http://www.springer.com/gp/book/978

My MSc advisor wrote a big book on multi-objective evolutionary optimization. http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780387332543 http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780387332543 He liked to have his students compare random search to evolutionary algorithms. There tended to not be a huge difference. I think that's why they are not so widely used when there is any kind of better method around. Probably in most cases you'd want to just understand the domain better. Hence, I don't believe EAs are the next big thing.