2015 Quarter 1

REPORT FROM THE ASSOCIATION FOR CONSTRAINT PROGRAMMING

This is a short summary of activities within the ACP during the months January-March 2015.

The 2015 ACP Executive Committee comprises the following people, in alphabetical order:

  • Pierre Flener - Conference Coordinator
  • Alan Frisch
  • Willem-Jan van Hoeve - Secretary
  • Christophe Lecoutre - Treasurer
  • Laurent Michel - President
  • Nina Narodytska
  • Helmut Simonis (ex-officio, non-voting)
  • Guido Tack

The ACP Executive Committee welcomes feedback and suggestions from the ACP community. We encourage you to engage with the ACP-EC to help design new initiatives that promote constraint programming.

ACP.1. The new Executive Committee

The term of the following members of the ACP Executive Committee ended in December 2014:

  • Yves Deville
  • Thomas Schiex - Treasurer
  • Helmut Simonis - President
  • Roland Yap

Many thanks for their work for the community and their help in running the association. Helmut Simonis will continue on as past-president member of the executive committee.

The outgoing members were replaced by the winners of the 2014 election (in alphabetical order):

  • Alan Frisch
  • Christophe Lecoutre
  • Laurent Michel
  • Nina Naroditskaya

Upon an internal vote within the new Executive Committee, the vacant office of President is taken up by Laurent Michel, and the vacant office of Treasurer is taken up by Christophe Lecoutre. The holders of the non-vacant offices continue, that is Pierre Flener as Conference Coordinator and Willem van Hoeve as Secretary.

ACP.2. CP 2016: Programme Chair

The Executive Committee has appointed Michel Rueher (University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, France) as Programme Chair of CP 2016. Recall that the latter is to be held in Toulouse (France), most probably from 5 to 9 September 2016, organised by a team led by Thomas Schiex as Conference Chair.

ACP.3. 2015 Research Excellence Award: Call for Nominations

The Executive Committee of the ACP invites nominations for the 2015 ACP award for Research Excellence in Constraint Programming, which will be presented at the CP conference in Cork, Ireland, August 31-September 4, 2015. The purpose of this award is to celebrate those CP researchers who have made exceptional and very influential research contributions to CP with their work. The award recipient will give a plenary talk at CP 2015. The costs for his/her participation to the conference will be covered by the ACP.

Past winners of this award can be found at http://www.a4cp.org/awards/research-excellence-award.

The deadline for submitting nomination packages is 1 June 2015.

More details about the submission process can be found at http://www.a4cp.org/node/1015.

ACP.4. 2015 Doctoral Research Award: Call for Nominations

The Executive Committee of the ACP invites nominations for the 2015 ACP Doctoral Research Award. The ACP Doctoral Research Award is awarded every year to a promising young researcher working in the area of constraint programming and who defended her/his thesis between January and December in the last two calendar years. The award, in the form of a certificate, will be presented at the CP 2015 conference, where the winning researcher will present a talk on the topic of her/his doctoral dissertation. The award includes a cash prize of 500 euros, plus free registration for the conference.

Past winners of this award can be found at: http://www.a4cp.org/awards/doctoral-research-award

The deadline for submitting nominations is 15 May 2015.

More details about the submission process can be found at http://www.a4cp.org/node/1016.

ACP.5. CP 2015 Incubator Workshop

The Association for Constraint Programming (ACP) invites proposals for a CP 2015 incubator workshop. An incubator workshop should address a promising novel topic, be multi-disciplinary in nature, and have the aim to broaden the application of CP or deepen its methodologies.

Organizers of the selected incubator workshop can request sponsorship from the ACP to strengthen the workshop program, which can for example be used to support external speakers. The ACP will make EUR 1,500 available for this purpose.

Workshop organizers that want to be considered to receive funding as incubator workshop should indicate this in the CP workshop proposal, together with a clear motivation.

More details:

ACP.6. CPAIOR 2015 Master Class

The conference CPAIOR 2015 will hold an associated Master Class on Constraint Programming and Verification on May 18-19, 2015. The ACP EC has decided to sponsor the Master Class with an amount of EUR 1500.

More details on the Master Class can be found here: http://cpaior2015.uconn.edu/master-class/

ACP.7. CP 2017: Call for Bids

The ACP now plans CP conferences two years in advance. The Executive Committee solicits bids for CP 2017. Such bids, following the guidelines at http://www.a4cp.org/events/conference-organisation-policy, are to be sent to conf-coordinator@a4cp.org by 31 May 2015.