Volume 5, Number 2, July 2009

Constraint Programming News

volume 5, number 2, July 2009

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

Contents

News

Welcome to CP News, an initiative of the Association for Constraint Programming.

We aim to provide a comprehensive summary of important news in the area of constraint programming. The newsletter is published quarterly in January, April, July, and October. Please email the relevant editor with any news, event, report or profile you want published. To subscribe, please register here.

REPORT FROM THE ASSOCIATION FOR CONSTRAINT PROGRAMMING

This is a short summary of activities within the ACP during the months April-June 2009.

The 2009 ACP Executive Committee comprises the following people:

- Barry O'Sullivan - President
- Jimmy H.M. Lee - Secretary
- Thomas Schiex - Treasurer
- Pedro Meseguer - Conference Coordinator
- Christian Bessiere
- John Hooker
- Karen Petrie
- Christian Schulte
- Peter Stuckey
- Michael Trick
- Roland Yap

1. Reminder: No EC Elections this Year

As set out in the new by-laws there will be no new election for EC members in 2009. This is because 2009 is the final year in the transition to an Executive Committee composed of members soley elected by the membership of the association. You will recall that under the old bylaws the Program and Conference Chair of the CP conference became members of the EC in the year following the conference. This is no longer the case.

In 2010 we will transition to an Executive Committee comprising of seven elected members. That committee will be as follows (listed in alphabetical order, with elected terms beside each name):

- John Hooker (2009-2012)
- Pedro Meseguer (2007-2010)
- Barry O'Sullivan (2009-2012)
- Karen Petrie (2009-2010)
- Thomas Schiex (2007-2010)
- Peter Stuckey (2009-2012)
- Roland Yap (2009-2010)

Those whose terms will end include (in alphabetical order):

- Christian Bessiere
- Jimmy H.M. Lee
- Christian Schulte
- Michael Trick

2. ACP Research Excellence Award 2009

This year a strong field of nominees was received for the ACP Research Excellence Award. The EC formed a committee, chaired by Barry O'Sullivan, comprising Pascal Van Hentenryck, Rina Dechter, Peter Stuckey and Jimmy Lee. The committee recommended that this year's award go to Professor Alan Mackworth of the University of British Colombia, Canada. We're delighted to report that Alan will attend CP-2009 to accept the award and deliver an acceptance talk.

3. ACP Doctoral Research Award 2009

This year's committee responsible for selecting the winning candidate for this award is chaired by Mike Trick. Members from the general community are recruited to serve as reviewers and make recommendations on the overall winner. This committee is currently working on selecting a winner from the very strong field of nominees we have received.

4. New Award: the ACP Outstanding Service Award

The ACP Executive Committee is pleased to announce the introduction of a new award, the ACP Outstanding Service Award. This award is to be given to an individual who has made significant contributions to the ACP community in a service capacity. The inaugural award will be in 2010. Like the two existing awards, nominations will be sought from the community and a final selection made by an inclusive committee. Further details will be made available at the CP General Assembly this year. The establishment of this award was well received at last year's assembly.

It is the intention of the EC to propose to the community that the Research Excellence Award be given on a two year cycle, with the Outstanding Service Award being offered also on a two year basis, in the years that the Research Excellence Award is not offered. We hope that the community will accept this proposal at this year's General Assembly.

5. CP Conferences in 2011

The ACP-EC is delighted to announce 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.

6. CP Conference in 2012

The EC would like to strongly encourage a bid from North America to host CP 2012. The last time the conference was held in North America was 2007 (Providence, Rhode Island). While the call for bids will not be formally circulated until later this year, we would encourage any potential bidders to contact a member of the EC at any time.

7. ACP Summer School 2009

The ACP Summer School 2009 was held at the Cork Constraint Computation Centre in June 2009, chaired by Barry O'Sullivan. The summer school was well attended with students. The ACP would like to thank Ken Brown, James Little, Barry O'Sullivan, Igor Razgon and Helmut Simonis for their tutorials. Details of the tutorials and the student talks can be found at:http://www.cs.ucc.ie/~ osullb/ACPSS2009

8. ACP Industry Advisory Board

The ACP-EC is working on the establishment of an Industry Advisory Board. Interested industry-based members of the community are encouraged to contact Barry O'Sullivan - b.osullivan@4c.ucc.ie - who will be contacting potential members once this initiative formally begins. We have not made much progress on this since the last newsletter, but we will progress the issue before CP.

9. ACP CP Standardisation Initiative

The CP standardisation effort is underway. Narendra Jussien and Jacob Feldman are leading this initiative. This is intended to be an inclusive process where the input of the entire community is being sought and encouraged. Please visit the CP standardisation web-site and contribute to the debate there -http://www.cpstandards.org

We are hoping that it will be possible to schedule an open meeting for this initiative at CP this year.

OTHER NEWS

News from the AFPC

The fifth French speaking Conference on Constraint Programming (JFPChttp://www.univ-orleans. fr/evenements/jfpc/) took place during the first days of June in Orléans, France. Around 40 papers were presented during those 3 days, and a whole afternoon has been devoted to industrial presentations. The programme committee was chaired by Yves Deville.

On June 3rd, the general assembly of the French Association for Constraint Programming (AFPC http://www.afpc-asso. org/) took place. A new Executive Committee whose president is Christine Solnon and vice-president Narendra Jussienhas been elected. Next JFPC will be organized in 2010 by Samir Loudni and Bruno Zamuttini in Caen, and the programme committee will be chaired by Christophe Lecoutre.

Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science

Krzysztof Apt

Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science (EPTCS) is an international refereed open access venue for the rapid electronic publication of the proceedings of workshops and conferences, and of festschriften, etc, in the general area of theoretical computer science, broadly construed.

Please keep this in mind if you wish to make workshop/conference proceedings available using an open-access model.

Looking for Volunteers to add CP to the Math Programming Glossary

I've recently been asked to join the Editorial Board of the Math Programming Glossary ( http://glossary.computing. society.informs.org/) in order to oversee the development of Constraint Programming material to be added to the Glossary.

The primary focus of the Glossary is to define terms in their common use and as such the Glossary seeks to be a reference work and an educational resource. We hope it is (or will be) the starting place for people to learn about aspects of mathematical programming. There is currently no content on Constraint Programming and so this invitation represents an important opportunity to make CP knowledge more widespread.

I am looking for about three student volunteers to help me with compiling an initial set of CP words and concepts. We will start with the index of existing textbooks to compile a list of words and then to craft concise definitions. The intent is to be descriptive (i.e., to reflect common usage) rather than to be prescriptive. I expect this will take about 6 months of not very intense work (e.g., a couple of hours a week at most).

What's in it for you?

You get to contribute to what will hopefully become an very important resource for constraint programming, specifically, and for operations researchers to learn about constraint programming.

You will have your name listed on the Acknowledgments page of the Math Programming Glossary, in a separate list specifying your contribution to the CP content.

Both the editor-in-chief, Allen Holder, and I will be happy to write letters of reference for you, detailing your contribution to this effort.

What am I looking for?

You should be a PhD student with excellent English language reading and writing skills.

You should be knowledgeable about CP. You do not have to be an expert but rather someone who has, for example, taken a graduate-level introduction to CP course or has done equivalent study on their own.

You should be actively researching some aspect of CP. This isn't important for the content of the CP entries but means that your research may be able to benefit from what you learn in helping to compile the entries.

Application Procedure

Please send an email to me (jcb@mie.utoronto.ca) with a short CV (2 pages max), a short description of your research directions, and the name and contact details for your supervisor. If you have any publications, please list them in your CV.

Deadline: August 1, 2009

J. Christopher Beck

CONSTRAINTS Journal Accepted Papers

The contents of the most recent issue are listed below. Links to the authors' final versions (no subscription required) and to the final published versions (subscription required) can be found here.

Volume 14, Issue 3 (2009)

Special Issue on the 13th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming
- Introduction to the Special Issue
Pages: 293
Christian Bessiere
- Model-Driven Visualizations of Constraint-Based Local Search
Pages: 294-324
Grégoire Dooms, Pascal Van Hentenryck, and Laurent Michel
- Limitations of Restricted Branching in Clause Learning
Pages: 325-356
Matti Järvisalo, Tommi Junttila
- Propagation via Lazy Clause Generation
Pages: 357-391
Olga Ohrimenko, Peter J. Stuckey, Michael Codish
- Solution Counting Algorithms for Constraint-Centred Search Heuristics
Pages: 392-413
Alessandro Zanarini, Gilles Pesant

Forthcoming Papers: Links to final versions of papers accepted for publication can be found here.

Constraint Programming Letters Journal Accepted Papers

Constraint Programming Letters (CPL) provides an international forum for the electronic publication of high-quality scholarly articles on constraint programming. All published papers are freely available online.

The goal of CPL is to promote and nurture constraint programming research, report on its successful applications, and encourage cross-fertilization with neighboring areas. In particular,

- CPL provides an international publication medium for constraint programming research with a commitment to rigorous yet rapid reviewing. Final versions are published electronically (ISSN 1932-0973) immediately upon receipt.

- CPL offers a forum for research on the practice of constraint programming, including topics such as applications, implementation, modeling, deployment successes and failures, and programming systems. Theoretical papers are also welcome.

- CPL aims at strengthening the links with neighboring communities, including the operations research, numerical analysis, planning, SAT, and verification communities. Papers reporting hybridizations of constraint programming with other techniques are especially welcome.

- CPL focuses on relatively short papers (less than 6,000 words) describing timely research results.

Other Publications

Book:

Title: "Metaheuristics: from design to implementation"
Author: Prof. El-Ghazali Talbi (University of Lille, CNRS, INRIA)
Wiley 2009 (624pp),
ISBN: 978-0-470-27858-1


Abstract: This book provides a complete background on metaheuristics and shows readers how to design and implement powerful search algorithms to solve complex optimization problems across a diverse range of optimization problems in science and industry. It presents the main design questions for all families of metaheuristics (e.g. representations, neighborhoods, parameter tuning, constraint handling, performance evaluation).


PhD Thesis

Jorge Maturana (LERIA, Angers),
"Contrôle générique de paramètres pour les algorithmes évolutionnaires"
24th of June 2009, Faculté des Sciences d'Angers, France.
Supervisor: Frédéric Saubion.


Ricardo Soto (LINA, Nantes),
"Langages et transformation de modèles en programmation par contraintes"
25th of June 2009, LINA, Université de Nantes, France.
Supervisor: Laurent Granvilliers

Special Issues CFPs

IEEE Special Issue CFP

AI in Space

Submissions due for review: 19 February 2010.

IEEE Intelligent Systems seeks original papers describing research on the special topic "AI in Space". This topic has been the focus of special issues, but the present call is interested in a glimpse of the future from our standpoint in 2010, and hence the theme AI Space Odyssey.

In anticipation of long duration space exploration missions to the Moon and Mars, likely by many nations, we are looking for papers describing how AI has made missions possible and will help make missions a success. Whereas in the 1980s and 1990s, researchers saw AI as a panacea for intelligent autonomous systems, the AI technology used today in space applications is often regarded differently. The editors of this special issue solicit papers that describe new and novel use of AI technology for space applications.

Papers may cover a variety of topics, listed here in no particular order:

  • semantics, ontologies, and knowledge representation,
  • pattern recognition and scientific discovery,
  • Intelligent System-Health Management (ISHM),
  • teleoperation and telerobotics,
  • planning, scheduling, constraint-satisfaction,
  • adjustable autonomy,
  • agent-based and multi-agent systems,
  • machine learning,
  • procedure-execution monitoring and aiding,
  • natural language processing and dialogue systems
  • decision-support,
  • history of AI applications in astronautics and space exploration.

In addition, the special issue will consider original papers on innovative, knowledge-based approaches to complex implementation challenges such as:

AI-driven simulations, virtual reality, virtual worlds and games for engineering, operations, management, training, and so on, software engineering, development, and verification and validation approaches for high-reliability autonomy, innovative approaches to security issues in autonomous software systems, software life-cycle issues with respect to very long-duration (10+ year) missions, decision and workflow support systems for planetary exploration and extra-vehicular activities, AI-driven robotics and approaches for human-robot teamwork, Smart sensor systems for situational awareness, and ubiquitous computing environments.

Submission Guidelines: Papers should situate the work within the field of AI, cite related work, and indicate the innovative aspects of the work and its direct contribution to the special challenges of space missions. We will not accept any paper which, at the time of submission, is under review for or has already been published or accepted for publication in a journal or another conference. All papers will undergo peer and editorial review. Submissions should present original reports of substantive new work and should be 3,500 to 7,500 words (counting a standard figure or table as 200 words) and should follow the magazines style and presentation guidelines (see www.computer.org/portal/pages/intelligent/mc/author.html). References should be limited to 10 citations. To submit a manuscript, access the IEEE Computer Society Web-based system, Manuscript Central, at https://mc. manuscriptcentral/cs-ieee

Questions?
Contact Guest Editors
Mike Shaft, mike.shafto@nasa.gov;
Maarten Sierhuis, maarten.sierhuis@nasa.gov;
and Robert Hoffman, rhoffman@ihmc.us

CONSTRAINTS Journal Special Issue

Constraint-based Approaches to Preference Modelling and Reasoning
Guest editors: P. Meseguer, F. Rossi, T. Schiex
Title and abstract submission deadline: July 30, 2009
EXTENDED paper submission deadline: August 10, 2009

Events

SAT 2009, 12th International Conference on Theory and Applications of
Satisfiability Testing, June 30 - July 3, 2009, Swansea, Wales, UK.
http://www.cs.swan.ac.uk/~ csoliver/SAT2009

TAP 2009, The Third International Conference on Tests And Proofs, July 2-3,
2009, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. http://tap.ethz.ch

TIMETABLING AND ROSTERING, Stream at EURO XXIII 2009 Conference, July 5-8,
2009, Bonn, Germany. http://www.euro-2009.de/

SARA 2009, The Eighth Symposium on Abstraction, Reformulation and
Approximation, July 6-9, 2009, Lake Arrowhead, CA, USA.
http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~ nathanst/sara/

SoCS-09, International Symposium on Combinatorial Search, July 8-10, 2009,
Lake Arrowhead, California, USA. www.search-conference.org

IJCAI-09, Twenty-First International Joint Conference on Artificial
Intelligence, July 11-17, 2009, Pasadena, California, USA.
http://ijcai-09.org/

ICLP'09 Doctoral Consortium, Fifth ICLP Doctoral Consortium, International
Conference on Logic Programming, July 14-17, 2009, Pasadena, California,
USA. http://www.cs.kuleuven.be/~ toms/DC2009/

CLPSE 2009 (Satellite event of ICLP 2009), 4th International Workshop on
(Constraint) Logic Programming and Software Engineering, July, 2009,
Pasadena, California, USA. http://logtalk.org/workshops/ clpse2009/

CHR 2009 (Co-located with ICLP 2009), Sixth International Workshop on
Constraint Handling Rules, July 14-17, 2009, Pasadena, California.
2009. http://www.uni-ulm.de/in/pm/ research/events/chr2009

CULP 2009 (Co-located with ICLP 2009), COMMERCIAL USERS OF LOGIC
PROGRAMMING, July 13-17, 2009, Pasadena, CA, USA.
http://www.cs.kuleuven.be/~ toms/CULP2009/

WLPE 2009 (Satellite event of ICLP 2009), The 19th Workshop on Logic-based
methods in Programming Environments, July 13-17, 2009, Pasadena, CA, USA.
http://gpd.sip.ucm.es/WLPE09/

CICLOPS 2009, (co-located with ICLP 2009 and IJCAI 2009), 9th International
Colloquium on Implementation of Constraint and LOgic Programming Systems,
July 14, 2009, Pasadena, California, USA.
http://www.cse.unt.edu/~tarau/ ciclops09/

ICLP 2009 (co-located with IJCAI 2009), 25th International Conference on
Logic Programming, July 14-17, 2009, Pasadena, California, USA.
http://www.ist.unomaha.edu/ iclp2009/

IWPSS-09, 6th International Workshop on Planning and Scheduling for Space,
July 19th - 21st, 2009, Pasadena, California, USA.
http://smc-it.org/iwpss/

UNIF 2009 (collocated with CADE 2009), 23rd International Workshop on
Unification, August 2, 2009, Montreal, Canada.
http://web2.clarkson.edu/ projects/carl/workshops/ unif2009.html

CADE-22, 22nd International Conference on Automated Deduction, August 2-7,
2009, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
http://complogic.cs.mcgill.ca/ cade22/

CSR 2009, 4th INTERNATIONAL COMPUTER SCIENCE SYMPOSIUM IN RUSSIA, August
18-23, 2009, Novosibirsk, Russia.
http://math.nsc.ru/conference/ csr2009/index.shtml

SLS 2009, Workshop on Engineering Stochastic Local Search
Algorithms---Designing, Implementing and Analyzing Effective Heuristics,
3-5 September, 2009. Brussels, Belgium. iridia.ulb.ac.be/sls2009

ACM-SIGPLAN PPDP 2009, 11th ACM-SIGPLAN* International Symposium on
Principles and Practice of Declarative Programming, September 7-9, 2009,
Coimbra, Portugal. http://www.dcc.fc.up.pt/ ppdp09

WLP 2009, 23rd Workshop on (Constraint) Logic Programming, September 15/16,
2009, Potsdam, Germany. Submission of papers: July 5, 2009.
http://www.constraint- programming.de/wlp2009/

FroCoS'09, 7th International Symposium on FRONTIERS OF COMBINING SYSTEMS,
September 16-18th, 2009, Trento, Italy. http://frocos09.disi.unitn. it/

Conference on Transportation Scheduling and Disruption Handling, September
17-19th, 2009, Prato, Italy. Paper submission deadline: July 15, 2009.
http://www.infotech.monash. edu.au/about/news/conferences/ cti-monash2009/
http://www.conftool.net/cti- monash2009/ (manuscript submission site)

GENPLAN 2009 (Held in conjunction with ICAPS 2009), ICAPS 2009 Workshop on
Generalized Planning: Macros, Loops, Domain Control, Sep 19/20th, 2009,
Thessaloniki, Greece. http://www.cs.umass.edu/~ siddhart/genplan09/

VVPS'09 (Held in conjunction with ICAPS 2009), 2nd Workshop on Verification
and Validation of Planning and Scheduling Systems, September 20, 2009,
Thessaloniki, Greece. http://www-vvps09.imag.fr

ICKEPS'09 (Held in conjunction with ICAPS 2009), Bi-annual International
Competition on Knowledge Engineering on Planning and Scheduling, September
19-23, 2009, Thessaloniki, Greece.
http://kti.mff.cuni.cz:80/~ bartak/ICKEPS2009/

SPARK 2009 (An ICAPS'09 Workshop), Scheduling and Planning Applications
woRKshop, September 19/20, 2009, Thessaloniki, Greece.
http://decsai.ugr.es/~lcv/ SPARK/09/index.htm

The ICAPS 2009 Workshop on AI P&S for Ontologies and Semantic Web,
September 19/20th, 2009, Thessaloniki, Greece.
http://decsai.ugr.es/~faro/ Workshop09/index.html

COPLAS 2009 (co-located with ICAPS 2009), Workshop on Constraint
Satisfaction for Planning and Scheduling, September, 19-20, 2009,
Thessaloniki, Greece. Submission deadline: July 5, 2009.
http://users.dsic.upv.es/~ msalido/workshop-icaps09/ index.html

SecArt '09 (co-located with ICAPS 2009), First Workshop on Intelligent
Security (Security and Artificial Intelligence), September 19/20th, 2009,
Thessaloniki, Greece. http://www.tzi.de/~edelkamp/ secart/cfp.html

ICAPS 2009, 19th International Conference on Automated Planning and
Scheduling, September 19-23, 2009, Thessaloniki, Greece.
http://icaps09.uom.gr

ModRef 2009 (held at CP 2009), Eighth International Workshop on
Constraint Modelling and Reformulation, September 20,
2009 - Lisbon, Portugal. Submission deadline: 31 July 2009.
http://www-users.cs.york.ac. uk/~frisch/ModRef/09/

SymCon'09 (A Satellite Workshop of CP 2009), The Ninth International
Workshop on Symmetry and Constraint Satisfaction Problems, September 20,
2009 - Lisbon, Portugal. Submission deadline: 31 July 2009.
http://alexf04.maclisp.org/ symcon09

BPPC'09 (associated to CP'09), Second International Workshop on Bin Packing
and Placement Constraints, September 20, 2009, Lisbon, Portugal. Paper
submission deadline: July 3, 2009. http://contraintes.inria.fr/ BPPC/

CSC'2009, The Fourth International CSP Solver Competition: Call for Solvers
and Benchmarks. http://cpai.ucc.ie/09/

WCB09 (associated to CP 2009), Workshop on Constraint Based Methods for
Bioinformatics, September 20th, 2009, Lisbon, Portugal. Paper submission
deadline: July 3, 2009. http://www.bioinf.uni- freiburg.de/Events/WCB09/

CPTheory09 (co-located with CP 2009), Workshop on Mathematical Foundations
of Constraint Programming, September 20, 2009, Lisbon, Portugal. Paper
submission deadline: 1st July 2009.
http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac. uk/~caj/cptheory2009/Workshop_ on_Mathematical_Foundations_ of_Constraint_Programming/ Introduction.html

LSCS'09 (To be held at CP'09), 6th International Workshop on Local Search
Techniques in Constraint Satisfaction, 20 September 2008, Lisbon, Portugal.
Paper submission deadline: 13 July 2009.
http://liris.cnrs.fr/~csolnon/ LSCS09.html

IntCP 2009 (Held in conjunction with the CP 2009), Workshop on Interval
Analysis and Constraint Propagation for Applications, September 20th, 2009,
Lisboa, Portugal. Submission deadline: 13 Jul 2009.
http://icwww.epfl.ch/~sam/ IntCP09

CROCS-09 (To be held in conjunction with CP-09), First International
Workshop on Constraint Reasoning and Optimization for Computational
Sustainability, September 20, 2009, Lisbon, Portugal. Submission Deadline:
AUGUST 9, 2009. http://www.computational- sustainability.org/crocs09

MiniZinc Challenge 2009 (announcement of results at CP 2009), Registration
opens: 1 June 2009. Problem submission deadline: 31 July 2009. Initial
submission round: 10 August 2009. Final submissions: 30 August 2009.
http://www.g12.csse.unimelb. edu.au/minizinc/challenge2009/

CP 2009, The 15th International Conference on Principles and Practice of
Constraint Programming, September 21-24, 2009, Lisbon, Portugal.
http://centria.di.fct.unl.pt/ conferences/cp2009/

SYNASC 2009, 11th International Symposium on Symbolic and Numeric
Algorithms for Scientific Computing, September 26-29, 2009, Timisoara,
Romania. http://synasc09.info.uvt.ro/

HM 2009, Sixth International Workshop on HYBRID METAHEURISTICS, October
16-17, 2009, Udine, Italy. http://www.diegm.uniud.it/ hm2009

ADT 2009, First International Conference on ALGORITHMIC DECISION THEORY,
October 21-23, 2009, Venice, Italy. http://www.adt2009.org

RR 2009, The Third International Conference on Web Reasoning and Rule
Systems, October 25-26, 2009, Chantilly, Virginia, USA.
http://www.rr-conference.org/ RR2009

INAP 2009, 18th International Conference on Applications of Declarative
Programming and Knowledge Management, November 5-7, 2009, Evora, Portugal.
Paper Submission Deadline: July 13, 2009. http://www.di.uevora.pt/ inap2009

RuleML 2009, 3rd International Symposium on Rules, Applications and
Interoperability, November 5-7 2009, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
http://2009.ruleml.org/

AI'09, The 22nd Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence,
1-4 December, 2009, Melbourne, Australia.
http://www.infotech.monash. edu.au/ai09

RCRA 2009 (co-located with AI*IA 2009), 16th RCRA workshop: Experimental
evaluation of algorithms for solving problems with combinatorial explosion,
11-12 December 2009, Reggio Emilia, Italy. http://rcra.aixia.it/rcra2009

PADL'10 (Co-located with ACM POPL'10), Twelfth International Symposium on
Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages 2010, January 18-19, 2010,
Pasadena, California, USA. Abstract submission: August 31, 2009. Paper
Submission: September 4, 2009.
http://clip.dia.fi.upm.es/ Conferences/PADL-2010/

DAMP 2010 (colocated with POPL 2010), Workshop on Declarative Aspects of
Multicore Programming, January 20-22, 2010, Madrid, SPAIN. SUBMISSION
DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 21, 2009. damp10.cs.nmsu.edu

PEPM'10 (Affiliated with POPL'10), ACM SIGPLAN 2010 Workshop on Partial
Evaluation and Program Manipulation, January 18-19, 2010, Madrid, Spain.
Paper submission: Tue, October 6, 2009, 23:59, Apia time.
http://www.program- transformation.org/PEPM10

CSP track of ACM SAC 2010, 25th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing,
March 22 - 26, 2010, Sierre, Switzerland. Paper submission: Sept. 8, 2009.
http://www.sci.unich.it/~ bista/organizing/constraint- sac2010/

CAREER NEWS

Call for the Microsoft Research PhD Scholarship

The PhD Scholarship Programme recognises and supports exceptional students who show the potential to make an outstanding contribution to science and computing. This programme supports PhD students in computing and those working at the intersection of computing and the sciences.

Application:
http://research.microsoft.com/ en-us/collaboration/global/europe/apply-europe.aspx

Schedule:
Application deadline: 16 September 2009
Notification of results: December 2009

Job opportunity at Dynadec

Principal Software Engineer

Dynadec (www.dynadec.com) is seeking a highly-skilled optimization engineer to join its technical team. This individual will work on the development and documentation of the proprietary Comet Platform and its application to large-scale, complex optimization problems, with a focus on scheduling, routing, and workforce management. He or she will be able to interact with customers, understand their requirements, translate them in optimization models, and develop computationally effective solutions to these models.

Requirements
- Ph.D. in Operations Research, Computer Science, or related field.
- Strong background in Constraint Programming, Local Search, and
Mathematical Programming.
- Strong Expertise in Modeling and Solving Complex Optimization Problems.
- Strong programming skills in C++
- Excellent communication skills.
- Ability to work in a team.

Domain Expertise
- Knowledge of scheduling, routing, rostering, and timetabling.
- Knowledge of visualization techniques and graphical user interface.
- Familiarity with parallel and distributed programming.

About Dynadec
Dynadec develops next-generation hybrid business decision optimization solutions that enable enterprises to solve their most challenging and complex operational problems. Dynadec's business decision optimization solutions for workforce management, vehicle routing, and resource scheduling are based on the company's proprietary Comet platform. For more information, visit http://www.dynadec.com.

Qualified applicants should submit their Resume with a cover letter to
careers@dynadec.com.

Professor Chair in Computing Science at Uppsala University, Sweden

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

Chair in Computing Science at the Department of Information Technology.

The scope of this professor chair includes constraint programming (CP) on which there is a research group in Uppsala (ASTRA: www.it.uu.se/research/group/ astra). No new research area for the IT department must be proposed, hence the existence of the ASTRA group is not an obstacle to applications from the CP community.

See http://www.personalavd. uu.se/ledigaplatser/787prof_ eng.html for details about this chair.

Embark Initiative for master's and Ph.D. students

Scholarships are available from the Embark Initiative for master's and Ph.D. students to study in Ireland. A call is now open with a deadline of 15th July 2009.

For further information see:
http://www.ircset.ie/Default. aspx?tabid=68

Qualified students interested in applying for one of these to use at the Cork Constraint Computation Centre, a leading CP and AI research centre -- www.4c.ucc.ie -- can contact the Director, Prof. Gene Freuder: e.freuder@4c.ucc.ie.

TWO 3-year Postdoctoral RA Positions in Algorithmic Game Theory

University of Liverpool, UK, and University of Warwick, UK
http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~ pwg/advertisement.html
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/ fac/cross_fac/dimap/agt- postdoc

The application procedures for these positions are separate; you are welcome to apply for both jobs by submitting separate applications.

Contacts for further enquiries:
Paul Goldberg P.W.Goldberg@ liverpool.ac.uk
Artur Czumaj A.Czumaj@warwick.ac.uk

Microsoft Cambridge Constraint Reasoning Group

The Microsoft Cambridge Constraint Reasoning Group is looking for a 1-year post-doc or advanced engineering candidate.

Suitable profiles:

  • Genetic programming
  • Automated planning
  • Theorem proving

Starting date: asap

Please send applications to youssefh at Microsoft dot com.

Uppsala University (Sweden) hereby declares the following position open for application:

PhD position in Constraint Programming for Wireless Sensor Networks at the Department of Information Technology.

The ProFuN project (www.it.uu.se/research/profun) on "A Programming Platform for Future Wireless Sensor Networks" is funded by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF) from 2009 to 2013. The goal is to provide a programming environment where sensors can be programmed as an ensemble rather than individually, so that programmers can focus on the services provided by the collection of sensors rather than on which particular sensor to program or on how communication will take place.

Combinatorial problems abound in this area, and the objective of this PhD is to model and solve the ones most strategic to ProFuN using constraint programming, by global search (propagation-based tree search) or local search. Problems occurring in the pre-configuration phase at the middleware level are especially important, such as the optimal placement of sensors in the network before deployment, determining the optimal subset and schedule of sensors to be activated after deployment, and optimal clustering. You may contact us for a more detailed description of these problems.

The PhD student shall be hosted by both the ASTRA research group on constraint programming (www.it.uu.se/research/group/ astra) and the CoRe group on communications research (www.it.uu.se/research/group/ core). The supervisors will be Professor Pierre Flener and Dr Justin Pearson (senior lecturer) of ASTRA, as well as Dr Edith Ngai (lecturer) of CoRe.

A PhD student position requires a Master of Science 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). The starting salary is 22,200 SEK per month.

The candidate is expected to have some background in combinatorial problem solving (especially constraint programming) and/or wireless sensor networks, a demonstrated interest in both topics, as well as strong skills in discrete mathematics and programming.

Uppsala University is striving to achieve a more equal gender balance and female candidates are particularly invited to apply.

For more information, please contact: Prof. Pierre Flener,
Pierre.Flener@it.uu.se, tel: +46 18 471 1028, Dr Justin Pearson,
Justin.Pearson@it.uu.se, tel: +46 18 471 7292, or Dr Edith Ngai,
Edith.Ngai@it.uu.se, tel: +46 18 471 5777.

The application deadline is 24 August 2009, and the instructions at http://www.personalavd.uu.se/ ledigaplatser/1792dorand_eng. html must be followed.

The Microsoft-CNRS Chair "Optimization for Sustainable Development"

(OSD) at Ecole Polytechnique is inviting applications for its 2009-2010 postdoctoral fellowship program. Research will be essentially led at LIX (Laboratory for Computer Science at Ecole Polytechnique) which offers a unique academic research environment, bringing together permanent staff researchers from CNRS, INRIA and CEA, as well as resident faculty from Ecole Polytechnique.

Context
Sustainable development has become a major issue and a universal concern in our societies. It is driven by the scarcity of natural resources and the necessity to control the effect of development. The OSD chair is built on the understanding that many problems raised by sustainable development can be modelled as stochastic multi-objective optimisation problems. Our research agenda will develop, integrate and unify techniques coming from operations research, stochastic programming, mathematical programming and computer science to tackle large scale multi-objective optimisation problems. Further information about the research teams at LIX can be found at the following address: http://www.lix. polytechnique.fr Further information about the OSD chair can be found at the following address: http://www. polytechnique.fr/osd-chair

Profile
Applicants must have completed their PhD before September 2009 in Algorithmic, Operations Research, Constraint Programming. Knowledge of stochastic programming and multicriteria optimization is a plus. Interest in sustainable development issues is strongly encouraged.

Position details
The fellowship will be for one year, with an opportunity for a fellow to present candidature for renewal for one additional year. The fellowship is supported by a competitive stipend. Applications will be accepted until September 1st. Candidates must send a resume (including a complete list of publications), a research statement and two reference letters to "youssefh AT microsoft DOT com" and "Philippe DOT Baptiste AT polytechnique DOT fr"