Volume 6, Number 2, July 2010

Constraint Programming News

volume 6, number 2, July 2010

Editors:
Jimmy Lee (events, career news)
Eric Monfroy (profiles, publications)
Toby Walsh (news, reports)

Contents

News

REPORT FROM THE ASSOCIATION FOR CONSTRAINT PROGRAMMING

This is a short summary of activities within the ACP during the months April-June 2010.

The 2010 ACP Executive Committee comprises the following people:

  • Barry O'Sullivan - President
  • Jimmy H.M. Lee - Secretary (non-elected)
  • Thomas Schiex - Treasurer
  • Pedro Meseguer - Conference Coordinator
  • John Hooker
  • Karen Petrie
  • Peter Stuckey
  • Roland Yap

ACP.1. ACP Executive Committee Elections 2010

As set out in the new by-laws there will be elections for four new EC members in 2010. Karen Petrie and Roland Yap were elected to two year terms ending in 2010. Pedro Meseguer and Thomas Schiex were elected to three year terms ending in 2010. As set out in the bylaws an Election Committee has been formed chaired by Jimmy Lee. Nominations for candidates will be managed by that committee. Members of the association can nominate candidates. The committee will also proactively seek nominations. The formal text of the call for nominations is being circulated.

The remaining members of the current EC are John Hooker, Barry O'Sullivan, and Peter Stuckey. Their elected terms come to an end in 2012.

ACP.2. ACP Doctoral Research Award 2010

A strong field of nominations has been received for the ACP Doctoral Research Award. A committee established by the EC is responsible for selecting the winning candidate for this award. Members from the general community are recruited to serve as reviewers and make recommendations on the overall winner.

ACP.3. New Award: the ACP Outstanding Service Award

A strong field of nominations has been received for this new award, which we plan to give at CP 2010. At present the EC is working on the selection of the first recepient. This award is to be given to an individual who has made significant contributions to the ACP community in a service capacity. Like the two existing awards, nominations were sought from the community.

ACP.4. Reminder: CP Conference in 2011

The ACP-EC would like to remind members that CP-2011 will be held in Perugia in Italy. The Conference Chair will be Stefano Bistarelli. The Programme Chair for CP-2011 will be announced shortly.

ACP.5. ACP Summer School 2010

This year's summer school was held from the 3rd-7th May in Aussois, France, organized by Y. Deville and C. Solnon. There were over 50 participants. The program included both introductory courses on the grounds of CP, with practicals with the Comet programming language, and advanced courses on challenging research areas of CP. The speakers were Yves Deville, Pierre Flener, Christophe Lecoutre, Laurent Michel, Gilles Pesant, Jean- Charles Régin, Thomas Schiex, Christine Solnon, and Pascal Van Hentenryck.

On behalf of the ACP, the EC would like to thank the speakers and tutorialists, and sincerely congratulate Christine and Yves for organising such a wonderful event.

Web: http://becool.info.ucl.ac.be/summerschool2010/

ACP.6. CP 2010 in St. Andrews, Scotland

The ACP EC would like to extend an invitation to all members of the CP community to attend the CP 2010 conference in St. Andrews. A sincere thanks goes to Dave Cohen, whose job as PC Chair has taken much of his time recently as he finalised the list of accepted papers. We wish Karen Petrie, Conference Chair, and her team every success as they prepare for the conference in September (6th-10th).

<

p>Web: http://cp2010.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk

CONSTRAINTS journal accepted papers

Solving Subgraph Isomorphism Problems with Constraint Programming
Stéphane Zampelli, Yves Deville, Christine Solnon

Redundant Modeling in Permutation Weighted Constraint Satisfaction Problems
Yat Chiu Law, Jimmy H.M. Lee, May H.C. Woo

Constraint Propagation on Quadratic Constraints
Ferenc Domes, Arnold Neumaier

Tractable Cases of the Extended Global Cardinality Constraint
Marko Samer, Stefan Szeider

Classes of Submodular Constraints Expressible by Graph Cuts
Stanislav Zivny, Peter G. Jeavons

Efficient Algorithms for Singleton Arc Consistency
Christian Bessiere, Stephane Cardon, Romuald Debruyne, Christophe Lecoutre

Dantzig-Wolfe Decomposition and Branch-and-Price Solving in G12
Jakob Puchinger, Peter J. Stuckey, Mark G. Wallace, Sebastian Brand

Formal Languages for Integer Programming Modeling of Shift Scheduling Problems
Marie-Claude Côté, Bernard Gendron, Claude-Guy Quimper, Louis-Martin Rousseau

A Global Constraint for Total Weighted Completion Time for Unary Resources
András Kovács, J. Christopher Beck

Other Publications

Book: - Ant Colony Optimization and Constraint Programming

Christine Solnon

232 pages
April 2010, Wiley-ISTE
ISBN: 978-1-84821-130-8
Hardcover

http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1848211309.html

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a metaheuristic which has been successfully applied to a wide range of combinatorial optimization problems. This book describes ACO and studies its efficiency for solving hard combinatorial problems, with a specific focus on constraint programming. The text is organized into three parts.

The first part introduces constraint programming, which provides high level features to declaratively model problems by means of constraints. It describes the main existing approaches for solving constraint satisfaction problems, including complete tree search approaches, local search and metaheuristics, and shows how they can be integrated within constraint programming languages.

The second part describes the ant colony optimization metaheuristic. Beyond the ant metaphor, it describes the mechanisms which allow artificial ants to converge towards solutions and, more particularly, those used to balance diversification and intensification.

The third part illustratesACO on different constraint satisfaction problems, and shows how to integrate ACO into a constraint programming library, thus combining the expressive power of constraint programming languages, to describe problems in a declarative way, and the solving power of ACO, to efficiently solve these problems.

Events

WPSS'2010 (as part of HPCS'10), A workshop on Parallel Satisfiability Solving: SAT and beyond SAT, Parallel Solving on New Architectures,
June 28 - July 2, 2010, Caen, Normandy, France.
http://cisedu.us/cis/hpcs/10/main/storageDocs.jsp?doc=3D/docs/hpcs/10/workshops/W6.WPSS.html

WORKSHOP ON EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION TECHNIQUES FOR CONSTRAINT HANDLING (held as part of GECCO-2010),
July 7-11, 2008, Portland, Oregon, USA.
http://www.4c.ucc.ie/GECCO2010/

Workshop on TRACTABILITY,
July 5-6, 2010, Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK.
http://research.microsoft.com/tractability2010/

SoCS 2010 (co-located with AAAI-2010), The Third International Symposium on Combinatorial Search,
July 8 - 10, 2010, Stone Mountain Resort, Atlanta, Georgia.
http://socs10.search-conference.org/

IWS 2010 (a satellite workshop of FLoC 2010), International Workshop on Strategies in Rewriting, Proving, and Programming,
July 9 2010, Edinburgh, UK.
http://iws2010.inria.fr

LoCoCo 2010 (a workshop of SAT 2010 at FLoC 2010), Workshop on Logics for Component Configuration,
July 10, 2010, Edinburgh, Scotland.
http://lococo2010.mancoosi.org/

MoChArt 2010 (co-located with AAAI-10), MODEL CHECKING and ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE,
July 11-12, 2010, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
http://mochart.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/

WARA-2010 (to be held in conjunction with AAAI-10), Workshop on Abstraction, Reformulation, and Approximation,
July 11-12, 2010 Atlanta, GA, USA.
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~sabhar/workshops/wara-2010

EURO XXIV Conference, Stream: "Computational and Modeling Tools for Decision-Making under Uncertainty and for Combinatorial Optimization",
11-14 July 2010, Lisbon.
Co-organizers: Pascal Van Hentenryck (Brown University) and Laurent Michel (University of Connecticut).

EURO XXIV Conference, Session "Industrial applications of scheduling and routing", organized within the stream "OR Applications in Industry",
11-14 July 2010, Lisbon.
Organizer: Geir Hasle, Chief Scientist, SINTEF Applied Mathematics.

EURO XXIV Conference, Stream: "TIMETABLING AND ROSTERING",
11-14 July 2010, Lisbon.
Organizer: Dario Landa Silva >dario.landasilva@nottingham.ac.uk<.

AAAI-10, Twenty-Fourth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence,
July 11-15, 2010, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
http://www.aaai.org/Conferences/AAAI/aaai10.php

UNIF 2010 (A FLoC workshop associated to RTA and IJCAR), 24th International Workshop on Unification,
14 July 2010, Edinburgh, UK.
http://www.dcs.kcl.ac.uk/staff/maribel/UNIF.html

WST 2010 (Affiliated with RTA and IJCAR at FLoC 2010), 11th International Workshop on Termination,
July 14 - 15, 2010, Edinburgh, UK.
http://imada.sdu.dk/~petersk/WST2010/

CICLOPS-WLPE 2010 (Satellite event of ICLP 2010), Joint Workshop on Implementation of Constraint Logic Programming Systems and Logic-based Methods in Programming Environments,
July 15, 2010, Edinburgh, Scotland, U.K.
http://users.dsic.upv.es/~ciclops-wlpe10/

ASPOCP 2010 (Collocated with ICLP 2010), 3rd Workshop on Answer Set Programming and Other Computing Paradigms,
July 16-19, 2010, Edinburgh (Scotland, U.K).
http://www.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/proj/aspocp10/

ICLP 2010 (part of FLoC 2010), 26th International Conference on Logic Programming,
July 16-19, 2010, Edinburgh, Scotland, U.K.
http://www.floc-conference.org/ICLP-home.html

ICLP-DC 2010 (Collocated with ICLP 2010), Sixth ICLP Doctoral Student Consortium,
July 16-19, 2010, Edinburgh (Scotland, U.K).
http://www.kodak.com/go/iclp10dc

CHR 2010 (co-located with ICLP 2010, part of FLOC 2010), Seventh International Workshop on Constraint Handling Rules,
July 20, 2010, Edinburgh, Scotland.
http://dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/CHR/CHR2010/

WCB10 (co-located to ICLP/FLOC 2010), Workshop on Constraint Based Methods for Bioinformatics,
July 21st, 2010 Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.
http://wcb10.dimi.uniud.it/

WING 2010 (Satellite Workshop of FLoC 2010), 3rd International Workshop on INvariant Generation,
July 21, 2010 University of Edinburgh, UK.
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/events/wing2010/

ISSAC 2010, International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Computation,
July 25-28, 2010, Munich, Germany.
http://www.issac-conference.org/2010

PPDP 2010 (co-located with LOPSTR 2010), 12th International ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Declarative Programming,
26-28 July 2010, Hagenberg, Austria.
http://www.risc.uni-linz.ac.at/conferences/ppdp2010/

ELAVIO 2010, XV Latin American Summer School on Operations Research,
August 2-6, 2010, Pacoti/CE, Brazil.
http://www.uece.br/xvelavio

ECAI-2010, The Nineteenth European Conference on Artificial Intelligence,
16-20 August 2010, Lisbon, Portugal.
http://ecai2010.appia.pt/

CSL 2010, The Annual Conference of the European Association for Computer Science Logic,
August 23-27, 2010, Brno, Czech Republic.
http://www.mat.uc.pt/~csl/

MFCP 2010 (co-located with Joint MFCS & CSL 2010), International Workshopon Mathematical Foundations of Constraint Programming,
28 August 2010, Brno, Czech Republic.
http://zivny.cz/mfcp10/

OR 2010, International Conference on OPERATIONS RESEARCH, "Mastering Complexity",
September 1-3, 2010, Munich, Germany.
http://www.or2010.de/

CRaGS-2010, The 1st International Workshop on Constraint Reasoning and Graphical Structures,
September 6, 2010, St. Andrews, Scotland, UK.
http://4c.ucc.ie/cp-graphical-ws-2010/

LSCS 2010, The 7th International Workshop on Local Search Techniques in Constraint Satisfaction,
September 6, 2010, St. Andrews, Scotland, UK.
http://becool.info.ucl.ac.be/lscs2010/

ModRef 2010, The 9th International Workshop on Constraint Modelling and Reformulation,
September 6, 2010, St. Andrews, Scotland, UK.
http://www.it.uu.se/research/group/astra/ModRef10

QiCP'2010, The 3rd Workshop on Quantification in Constraint Programming,
September 6, 2010, St. Andrews, Scotland, UK. Submission deadline: July 1, 2010.
https://qicp2010.greyc.fr/

SofT'10, The 10th Workshop on Preferences and Soft Constraints,
September 6, 2010, St. Andrews, Scotland, UK.
http://logos.ucd.ie/events/soft10/

SymCon'10, The 10th International Workshop on Symmetry in Constraint Satisfaction Problems,
September 6, 2010, St Andrews, Scotland, UK.
http://www.it.uu.se/research/group/astra/SymCon10/

TRICS 2010, The 3rd Workshop on Techniques foR Implementing Constraint programming Systems,
September 6, 2010, St Andrews, Scotland, UK.
http://www.cs.kuleuven.be/~guido.tack/2010TRICS/

CP 2010 Doctoral Programme,
September 6, 2010, St Andrews, Scotland, UK.
http://zivny.cz/dp10/

CP 2010, The 16th International Conference on Principles and Practices of Constraint Programming,
September 6-10, 2010, St Andrews, Scotland, UK.
http://cp2010.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/index.php

JELIA 2010, 12th European Conference on Logics in Artificial Intelligence,
September 13-15, 2010, Helsinki, Finland.
http://jelia2010.tkk.fi/

The 2nd Conference on Transportation Scheduling and Disruption Handling,
September 20-22, 2010, Prato, Italy. Talk abstract submission deadline: July 31, 2010.
http://www.infotech.monash.edu.au/about/news/conferences/cti-monash2010/

AVoCS 2010, 10th International Workshop on Automated Verification of Critical Systems,
Düsseldorf, Germany, September 21-23, 2010
http://www.formal-methods.de/avocs2010

RR 2010, 4th International Conference on Web Reasoning and Rule Systems,
September 22-24, 2010, Bressanone/Brixen, Italy.
http://www.rr-conference.org/RR2010

SYNASC 2010, 12th International Symposium on Symbolic and Numeric Algorithms for Scientific Computing,
September 23-26, 2010, Timisoara, Romania. Submission deadline: July 5, 2010.
http://synasc10.info.uvt.ro/

CoProD'10. 3rd International Workshop on Constraint Programming and Decision Making
ENS Lyon, France, September 30-October 1, 2010
http://coprod.constraintsolving.com

RulesFest 2010, 3rd International Conference on Reasoning Technologies
October 11-14, 2010, San Jose, CA, USA
http://rulesfest.org/

IEEE-ICTAI'10, 22th International IEEE Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence,
October 27-29, 2010, Arras, France.
http://www.cril.univ-artois.fr/ictai10/

META 2010, International Conference on Metaheuristics and Nature Inspired Computing,
October 28-30, 2010, Djerba, Tunisia.
http://www.lifl.fr/META10/

APLAS 2010, Eighth Asian Symposium on Programming Languages and Systems,
November 28-December 1, 2010, Shanghai, China.
http://basics.sjtu.edu.cn/conference/aplas2010/

Track on Constraint Solving and Programming part of Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing Tunghai University,
TaiChung, Taiwan, March 21-25, 2011
http://www.dmi.unipg.it/~bista/organizing/constraint-sac2011/

IJCAI 2011, 22nd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence,
July 19-22, 2011, Barcelona, Spain. Abstract submission deadline: January 19, 2011. Paper submission deadline: January 24, 2011.
http://www.ijcai-11.org/

Career news

Microsoft Research PhD Scholarship 2011

The MSR PhD Scholarship program starts again. You'll find all the details here, http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/global/apply-europe.aspx

Application deadline 15 September 2010.

Two postdoc positions in Optimization and Sustainable Development (Microsoft-CNRS Chair, LIX Ecole Polytechnique)

The Microsoft Research-CNRS chair "Optimization for Sustainable Development" (http://chaire-osd.polytechnique.fr/) at LIX, Ecole Polytechnique (near Paris, France) is inviting applications for two postdoctoral positions in the field of Operations Research applied to Sustainable Development applications.

Research at the OSD Chair focuses on the use of optimization techniques to applications in sustainable development, including transportation, scheduling and energy-related topics. Methodology-wise, we pursue interests in: multi-objective optimization, stochastic programming, combinatorial optimization, nonlinear and mixed-integer programming.

Current projects carried out by Chair members focus on:

  • green VRP
  • multi-modal shortest paths in dynamic road networks
  • multi-objective shortest paths
  • solution algorithms for mixed-integer nonlinear programming
  • graph theory and combinatorial optimization
Applicants must hold a Ph.D. in an optimization related field, and have an interest in applications to sustainable development.

Applications should include:

  • a motivation letter
  • a detailed CV (including a complete list of publications)
  • two reference letters
  • a research statement detailing the proposed research field
Application material should be sent to Leo Liberti (leoliberti@gmail.com) and carry "OSD chair postdoc" in the subject field. The deadline for applications is July 15, 2010, with a view to start around October 2010.

One of the two positions concerns the Multiobjective Optimization project described below. The other position is open (preferably within one of the research subjects listed above).

Multiobjective optimization (MOO) problems with preferences are MOO problems plus preferences over the objectives. Therefore preferences act as a filter and select the "preferred" solutions among Pareto-optimal ones. Preferences can be incorporated in MOO at different levels: before resolution, during the search process or after the resolution process.

On the other hand, representing and reasoning about/with preferences have been extensively developed in Artificial Intelligence over the past decade resulting in robust and successful languages for preferences representation. The aim of this project is to integrate these languages into MOO problems.

Applicants to the "MOO&Preferences" project should specify their preference *clearly* in their application. Limited to the MOO applicants, knowledge of theory of preferences, multicriteria optimization, stochastic programming is a plus. Applications specific to the MOO project should be sent to Souhila Kaci (kaci@cril.fr). The deadline for applications is July 15, 2010, with a view to start around October 2010.

Post-Doc Positions at Univ. College Dublin

The Complex and Adaptive Systems Laboratory at University College Dublin is opening three post-doctoral positions in the area of Boolean-based constraint solving and optimization. The post-doctoral researchers will be involved in developing new decision and optimization procedures for Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) and Boolean Satisfiability (SAT).

Applicants should have a PhD degree in Computer Science or related discipline. Experience with tool development is desirable. The post-doctoral researcher appointments will be for either 1 or 3 years. The salary for post-doctoral researchers varies between 37750 EUR and 46255 EUR, depending on experience.

More information is available at http://www.csi.ucd.ie/staff/jpms/vacancies/ and at http://www.ucd.ie/hr/jobvacancies/. The deadline for applications is June 11. Informal enquiries should be directed to Joao Marques-Silva (http://www.csi.ucd.ie/staff/jpms/).

Post Graduate position in Risk Management at University College Cork, Ireland

STOCHASTIC CONSTRAINT PROGRAMMING FOR MINIMISING RISK

Stochastic Programming is a subfield of Operations Research that can solve multi-stage decision problems. Constraint Programming is a younger subfield of Artificial Intelligence aimed at deterministic (non-stochastic) problems, with a rich modelling language and a large family of powerful solution algorithms. Stochastic Constraint Programming (SCP) is a recent hybrid of the two frameworks, designed to compactly model and efficiently solve problems involving both constraints and uncertainty. However, SCP requires further development in order to be a useful real-world tool, as most current solution algorithms do not scale up to large applications.

This project will develop SCP for risk management. It is part of a project jointly funded by the Irish Research Council for Science and Engineering Technology (IRCSET) and IBM. Three different strands will work alongside IBM in carrying out new research to make users better informed about risk, through a wide variety of mathematical and AI instruments. Its overarching objective is to bring together complementary approaches to risk assessment and delivery.

Principal Investigator: Dr S. Prestwich (s.prestwich@cs.ucc.ie)

The candidate should have (or be about to obtain) a good honours degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Operations Research or a related subject.

Professorship in Constraint Programming

University College Cork (UCC) occupies a unique place in the history of Computer Science and Information Technology - Boolean algebra, one of the fundamental ideas underlying the design of both computer hardware and software, was developed by George Boole, who was a professor of Mathematics in the University.

Today, Computer Science, which is part of the College of Science, Engineering and Food Science, is one of the largest academic units within the University. There are about 450 undergraduate students, 100 students following taught post-graduate programmes and 45 research students, the vast majority at doctoral level. There are 30 academic and 13 support staff. In addition, 32 post-doctoral researchers are employed in the various research groups and centres within Computer Science.

Applications are invited for the above full-time permanent post.

The person appointed will be expected, if asked to do so, to serve as Director of the Cork Constraint Computation Centre (4C), the largest research group in Computer Science. Staff in 4C comprise 8 academic staff, 22 research staff and 9 support staff; there are 21 research students, the majority at doctoral level.

The appointee will have a doctorate in Computer Science or a related discipline; a scholarly and research reputation of international standing in Constraint Programming or a closely-related field, with a significant record of sustained internationally published research; and a proven track record of seeking and obtaining substantial funding for research. A strong record of engagement with industry will be an advantage.

UCC is committed to supporting its regional hinterland by engaging in world-class research and education, with a diversified, international university community. In line with this, Computer Science wishes to strengthen its strategic capabilities at senior level to support the continuing development of its teaching, research and publication activities.

For further information see www.ucc.ie/hr/vacancies

Informal enquiries may be made to Professor James Bowen, Head of Computer Science, Tel: +353 21 420 5892 / Email: j.bowen@cs.ucc.ie

Salary scale (new entrants) EUR 113,604 - EUR 145,953

Closing date: 12 pm, Thursday, 30th September 2010.

Completed application forms must be returned to: Department of Human Resources, University College Cork, Ireland.

Tel: +353 21 4903073 / Email: recruitment@per.ucc.ie / Fax +353 21 4271568

PhD position on "Constraint Programming for Software Verification"

Uppsala University hereby declares the following position to be open for application:

PhD position in Computer Science at the Department of Information Technology, for the topic "Constraint Programming for Software Verification". The position is supported by a four-year grant from the Swedish Research Council (VR) to the project "Software Verification". The scope of this PhD is applying constraint programming to software verification.

The PhD student shall be hosted by both the ASTRA group on constraint programming ( http://www.it.uu.se/research/group/astra/) and the Algorithmic Program Verification group (http://www.it.uu.se/research/docs/fm/apv/). The main supervisor will be Prof. Pierre Flener. The co-supervisors will be Prof. Parosh Abdulla and Dr Justin Pearson (senior lecturer).

A PhD student position requires a Master of Science in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent in a field that is relevant for the topic of the PhD thesis. Candidates of all nationalities may apply.

The position is for a maximum of five years and includes departmental duties at a level of at most 20% (typically teaching). Further information: http://www.teknat.uu.se/ and http://www.it.uu.se/.

Uppsala University is striving to achieve a more even gender balance among its staff and women are especially encouraged to apply.

The candidate is expected to have some background in combinatorial problem solving (especially constraint programming) and/or software testing and verification, a demonstrated interest in both topics, as well as strong skills in discrete mathematics and programming. Applications must include a brief description in English of research interests and past experience that are relevant to the thesis topic, a CV, copies and translations (into English or Swedish) of diplomas and transcripts, a copy/abstract of the Master thesis (or the current draft thereof, if it is unfinished), other relevant documents, as well as the earliest feasible starting date of employment. Candidates must provide contact information to at least three referees, but no actual reference letters.

For more information, please contact: Prof. Pierre Flener, pierre.flener@it.uu.se

You are welcome to submit your application no later than 16 August, 2010, UFV-PA 2010/1857. http://www.personalavd.uu.se/ledigaplatser/1857dokeng.html

Post-Doc Positions Available

Embedded System Research Unit
Center for Information and Communication Technology
Fondazione Bruno Kessler
Trento, Italy
!!! Application Deadline Approaching !!!

The Embedded System Research Unit (http://es.fbk.eu) of the Information and Communication Technology Center of the Bruno Kessler Foundation, Trento, Italy, is seeking candidates for Post-Doc positions, to be hosted according to the call of proposal "Trentino - The Trentino programme of research, training and mobility of post-doctoral researchers", to be funded by the Autonomous Province of Trento, see: http://www.uniricerca.provincia.tn.it/binary/pat_uniricerca/news/call_1_post_doc_2010_incoming_en.1273589322.pdf

Applications are invited in the broad field of formal verification and planning. Topics of interest include:

  • Model Checking
  • Safety Analysis
  • Schedulability
  • Planning and Run-time Monitoring
Project proposals may have a duration of between two and three years.

Candidate Profile
The ideal candidate should have a PhD degree in computer science, mathematics or electronic engineering, combine solid theoretical background and software development skills, and have some degree of autonomy.

The candidate should be able to work in a collaborative environment, with a strong commitment to reaching research excellence and achieving assigned objectives.

In depth previous experience in at least one of the following areas will be considered favorably:

  • Symbolic Model Checking
  • Propositional Satisfiability
  • Satisfiability Modulo Theory
  • Requirements Analysis
  • Constraint Solving and Optimization
  • Monitoring and Diagnosability
  • Software Verification
  • Safety Analysis (FTA, FMEA)

We draw attention on the following requirements stated in the call for proposal.

  1. The proposing researcher must have a PhD, obtained in Italy or abroad no more than three years before the deadline of this call.
  2. The proposing researcher must not have had any working relationship (including any fellowship, scholarship, research grant, contract, cooperation) with any research organizations which have their registered office or operating centres inside Trento Province, longer than 30 days on the whole, during the two years before the deadline of this call.

Applications and Inquiries Potential candidates should express their interest and/or inquire for further information by sending email to jobs[at]fbk[dot]eu.

Applications should contain a statement of interest, with a Curriculum Vitae, and the names of three reference persons. PDF format is strongly encouraged.

Emails will be automatically processed and should have "RIF: ES/postdoc" as subject.

Potential candidates will be interviewed in order to define the objectives of the research activities and to obtain the endorsement of the hosting institution. If successful, they will be required to complete the application through the PAT site by July 13th, 2010.

The applications will be evaluated by an independent team of experts.

The Embedded System Research Unit
The Embedded Systems Unit consists of about 15 persons, including researchers, post-Doc, PhD students, and programmers. The Unit carries out research, tool development and technology transfer in the fields of design and verification of embedded systems.

Current research directions include:

  • Satisfiability Modulo Theory, and its application to the verification of hardware, embedded critical software, and hybrid systems (Verilog, SystemC, C/C++, StateFlow/Simulink)
  • Formal Requirements Analysis based on techniques for temporal logics (consistency checking, vacuity detection, input determinism, cause-effect analysis, realizability and synthesis)
  • Model-based engineering and formal verification of aerospace systems using model checking techniques, on-board reasoning systems for autonomous vehicles using planning techniques
  • Formal Safety Analysis, based on the integration of traditional techniques (e.g. Fault-tree analysis, FMEA) with symbolic verification techniques

The unit develops and maintains several tools:

The unit is currently involved in several research projects, funded by the European Union, the European Space Agency, the European Railway Agency, as well as in industrial technology transfer projects. The projects aim at applying research results to key application domains such as space, avionics, railways, hardware design and mobile embedded applications.

A list of past and present projects, the unit has been involved in, include:

The Embedded Systems (ES) Unit is part of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Center of Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK), formerly Istituto Trentino di Cultura, a private non-profit research centre established by the government of Autonomous Province of Trento (PAT) in 1976. The institute, through its ICT Center, is active in the areas of Information Technology, Microsystems, and Physical Chemistry of Surfaces and Interfaces. Today, FBK is an internationally recognized research institute, collaborating with industries, universities, and public and private laboratories in Italy and abroad. The institute's applied and basic research activities aim at resolving real-world problems, driven by the need for technological innovation in society and industry.

Location
Trento is a lively town of about 100.000 inhabitants, located 130 km south of the border between Italy and Austria. It is well known for the beauty of its mountains and lakes, and it offers the possibility to practice a wide range of sports. Trento enjoys a rich cultural and historical heritage, and it is the ideal starting point for day trips to famous towns such as Venice or Verona, as well as to enjoy great naturalistic journeys. Detailed information about Trento and its region can be found at http://www.trentino.to/home/index.html?_lang=3Den.

Links

Contact Persons

CDD Ingénieur de Recherche en Informatique au CRIL UMR 8188 Développement de prototypes en intelligence artificielle

Le Centre de Recherche en Informatique de Lens (CRIL UMR 8188) recrute en CDD un Ingénieur de recherche en informatique, sur support de l'Université d'Artois. La durée du contrat est d'un an renouvelable.

Le CRIL est une unité de 50 personnes notée A+ par l'AERES. Sa spécialité concerne les fondements et les applications de l'intelligence artificielle. Le laboratoire développe des systèmes d'intelligence artificielle et des prototypes très souvent couronnés dans les compétitions internationales de solveurs. La personne recrutée contribuera au développement, la consolidation et la valorisation de ces logiciels.

Les candidats devront posséder une expérience substantielle du développement de logiciels en C et Java.

La prise de fonction est prévue le 1 septembre 2010.

Les candidatures comprenant un CV et une lettre de candidature sont adresser dans le format pdf Eric Grégoire, Directeur du CRIL.

Postdoctoral Position in Symbolic Computation

The INRIA Cassis team in Besançon, France, is offering a half-year post-doctoral position on the formalization of multi-scale methods for MEMS arrays.

The context is the design of microsystem array architectures, including microcantilevers, micromirrors, droplet ejectors, micromembranes, microresistors, biochips, etc to cite only a few. The numerical simulation of such whole arrays based on classical methods like the Finite Element Method (FEM) is prohibitive for today's computers (at least in a time compatible with the time scale of a designer). The calculation of a reasonably complex cell of a three-dimensional microsystem requires about 1000 degrees of freedoms which leads to about 10 000 000 degrees of freedoms for a 100 x 100 array. There is a solution consisting in approximating the model by a multi-scale method. The resulting approximated model is rigorously derived from the exact one through a sequence of formal transformations that differs for each case. A great challenge is to generalize these formal computations and to automate them, at least in part. The post-doctoral work consists in prototyping the implementation of a family of formal transformations used in multiscale methods, in a computer algebra system (e.g. Maple, the symbolic toolbox of Matlab, or Sage) and to validate them by comparison with hand-made derivations described in the literature on this subject.

Candidates are expected to have a strong background in formal methods. A good mathematical background would be appreciated.

Applicants should submit a curriculum vitae, their Ph.D. dissertation, a statement of research, and recommendation letters. Applications should be received as soon as possible and before June 8, 2010, date of a first selection, although the search will continue until an appropriate candidate has been identified.

Informal inquiries about the position should be directed to Alain Giorgetti (alain.giorgetti@univ-fcomte.fr).

It would be highly appreciated if you could share this announcement with your colleagues, students and individuals whose research is in computer science, computer engineering, and related areas.

Alain GIORGETTI

Equipe VESONTIO - projet INRIA CASSIS

LIFC
EA 4269
16 route de Gray
25030 BESANÇON CEDEX
FRANCE

Tel.: (33) (0)3.81.66.66.60
Fax : (33) (0)3.81.66.64.50
Web : http://lifc.univ-fcomte.fr/~giorgetti


CASSIS - Combining ApproacheS for the Security of Infinite state Systems
LIFC - Laboratoire d'Informatique de l'Université de Franche-Comté
VESONTIO - VErification, SpécificatiON, Test et Ingénierie des mOdèles

Post-doctoral position "Distributed constraint reasoning for virtual power plant" in Mines de Douai

Context
The liberalization of electricity market and the massive introduction of Distributed Generation (DG) (wind turbine, photovoltaic panels, micro turbine generators...) induce many issues in the power management system of electrical networks. Currently, all management tasks of a power grid (operation, optimization, planning and supervision) are performed through a central process. Recent researches have investigated the use of multi-agent systems in power grids.

Subject
This post-doctoral position aims to study the benefits of multi-agent systems for a large-scale deployment of many small DGs and their integration in a virtual power plant. More precisely, the candidate will develop multi-agent coordination mechanisms based on distributed constraint reasoning (DCR). DCR provides a promising framework to deal with distributed real-world problems involving variables and constraints shared by different agents. DisCSP / DCOP models will be developped in collaboration with partners working on the electrical engineering part of the project.

Skills and qualifications
Candidates should have a PhD in multi-agent systems and / or constraint reasoning. Experiences with disCSP / DCOP solving is expected. Experiences in Electrical Engineering would be appreciated.

The position will be for a period of 18 months starting from september 2010, located in Douai, France. The salary will depend on qualifications and experience.

Candidates are invited to send as soon as possible, a CV and a covering letter to: arnaud.doniec@mines-douai.fr and stephane.lecoeuche@mines-douai.fr