Volume 5, Number 1, April 2009

Constraint Programming News

volume 5, number 1, April 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 January-March 2009.

1. The 2009 ACP Executive Committee

The 2009 ACP Executive Committee comprises the following people, in alphabetical order (officers identified)::

- Christian Bessiere

- John Hooker

- Jimmy H.M. Lee - Secretary

- Pedro Meseguer - Conference Coordinator

- Barry O'Sullivan - President

- Karen Petrie

- Thomas Schiex - Treasurer

- Christian Schulte

- Peter Stuckey

- Michael Trick

- Roland Yap

 

2. Hosting of CP-Online and the ACP Web-site

4C will provide hosting services for the main ACP and CP-Online web-sites. The URLs of these sites are:

http://www.4c.ucc.ie/a4cp

http://www.4c.ucc.ie/cponline

For the past several years these sites have been hosted by the University of Padova. The ACP would like to extend its gratitude to Francesca Rossi and Mirco Gelain for their hard work and service to the CP community.

 

3. Location of CP 2010

The ACP-EC is delighted to announce that CP-2010 will be held in St. AndrewsUniversity in Scotland. The Conference Chair will be Karen Petre. She will be supported by an excellent local organising committee involving Peter Jeavons (Oxford), Chris Jefferson (St. Andrews), Alan Frisch (York), Ian Gent (St. Andrews), Angela Miguel (St. Andrews), Ian Miguel (St. Andrews), Patrick Prosser (Glasgow) and Barbara Smith (Leeds). The Programme Chair for 2010 has yet to be decided. We also have not yet made a decision regarding the location of CP 2011.

 

4. ACP Summer School 2009

 

The ACP Summer School 2009 will be held at the Cork Constraint Computation Centre. This year's school will cover a variety of topics in constraint programming and its applications. Web: http://www.cs.ucc.ie/~osullb/ACPSS2009

 

5. Call for Nominations: for the ACP Research Excellence Award 2009.

The Executive Committee of the ACP invites nominations for the 2009 ACP award for Research Excellence in Constraint Programming, which will be presented at CP 2009 inLisbon, Portugal, in September 2009. 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 call for nominations is included in this edition of the CP-News. Past winners of this award can be found at: http://www.4c.ucc.ie/a4cp/acp_award.htm

 

6. Call for Nominations: for the ACP Doctoral Research Award 2009.

The Executive Committee of the ACP invites nominations for the 2009 ACP Doctoral Research Award, which will be presented at CP 2009 inLisbon, Portugal, in September 2009. The ACP Doctoral Research Award is awarded every year to a promising young researcher working in the area of constraint programming and who defended his/her thesis between January and December of the previous two years. The call for nominations for this award is included in this edition of the CP-News. Past winners of this award can be found at: http://www.4c.ucc.ie/a4cp/doctoral_award.htm

 

7. ACP Joins the ACM Special Interest Group in Logic and Computation

The logic and computation community has been discussing for the last couple of years the establishment of a Special Interest Group on Logic and Computation (SIGLOG), under the auspices of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). ACM SIGs are technical communities that operate somewhat autonomously of the ACM, but they are covered by ACM's financial umbrella and guidelines. See http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigs. SIGLOG, under the leadership of Professor Moshe Vardi (RiceUniversity), has been established. The motivation for starting SIGLOG is the observation that while the logic and computation community is technically vibrant, it is fragmented and lacks a voice that represents its true strength. The establishment of SIGLOG creates an organization that can serve as the focal point for logic and computation. As an example, SIGLOG is be the home of FLoC, a successful federated conference that have been organized since 1996 on an ad-hoc basis. SIGLOG also sponsors conferences that currently do not have a sponsoring organizations. SIGLOG will also establish prizes and awards in the area of logic and computation, broadly conceived.

The ACP has joined SIGLOG. The ACP representative will be Peter Stuckey.

 

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.

 

9. ACP CP Standardisation Initiative

Jacob Feldman and Narendra Jussien have submitted a report on their initial steps in the direction of CP standardization. In May-2009 they will make available a new website http://www.cpstandards.org that will be a central place where CP professionals can discuss and specify common principles, concepts, implementation approaches, and concrete straw-man proposals for different CP standards. This web-site will maintain a Discussion Forum where all contributors may express their opinions about different standardization aspects and suggest concrete improvements. The first standard under consideration is a "Java CP API" that will be implemented using a well-established process for Java Technology Specification, JSR.

____________________________________________________________________________

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS FOR THE

Association for Constraint Programming

AWARD FOR RESEARCH EXCELLENCE IN CONSTRAINT PROGRAMMING 2009

 

OVERVIEW

The Executive Committee of the ACP invites nominations for the 2009 ACP award for Research Excellence in Constraint Programming, which will be presented at CP 2009 inLisbon, Portugal, in September 2009. 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 2009. The costs for his/her participation to the conference will covered by the ACP.

 

ELIGIBILITY

Nominations for this award are invited from members of the ACP.

 

NOMINATION PROCESS

A nomination package consists of a nomination form from one nominator, and reference forms from at least 2 references.

Typically, a nominator is somebody who knows the nominee very well, and locates the references, ensuring that they do their parts in time to produce a convincing nomination package. Ideally, a reference is a well known member of the CP community who has never had a very close relationship with the nominee, but who can speak with authority for him or her.

Nominations and reference forms should follow the form below and should be sent (nomination forms by the nominators, and reference forms by references) by email to secretary@cp-online.org. The textual part of this forms should be a statement of why the nominee deserves the award. The Award Committee is looking for evidence that the nominee has generated some of the most important and influential work in the field. Effective letters will therefore emphasize what the nominee has done and why it matters.

 

TIMEFRAME

The nomination package must arrive at the above address by June 21, 2009. We cannot accept anything received after that date. We will acknowledge receipt of nominations. The decision will be available on July 13, 2008.

 

AWARD COMMITTEE

Every year, an Award Commmittee will decide the award receipient among the nominees, and will include: the president and secretary of the ACP-EC, two previous award receipients, and the program chair of the CP conference where the award will be given.

Members of the award committee cannot be candidates, nor can they support a candidate by being a nominator or a reference.

Enquiries concerning nominations should be directed to the ACP EC Secretary (Jimmy Lee) at the address secretary@cp-online.org. More information about the ACP can be found in the ACP web site (www.a4cp.org).

 

 

_____________________________ Nomination Form _______________________________

 

NOMINATION FORM: ACP AWARD FOR RESEARCH EXCELLENCE IN CONSTRAINT PROGRAMMING

Please answer, as completely as possible, Questions 1 to 9 by editing this form directly, and email to secretary@cp-online.org.

The email submission must be in plain text (ASCII) and the answer to Question 9 must be limited to 300 words. Regarding Question 9, it is important to show evidence that the nominee has generated some of the most important and influential work in the CP field. Effective letters will therefore emphasize what the nominee has done and why it matters.

The information on this form is confidential. Neither the candidate nor the references will be informed of the views you express.

 

1. Nominator's Name and Affiliation (first, middle, last; address; telephone; fax; and email address)

2. References (list at least 2 people who will submit the reference forms)

3. Candidate's Name and Affiliation (first, middle, last; address; telephone; fax; email address; and webpage)

4. Candidate's Education (highest degree received, field, institution, date)

5. Record of Professional Experience (list of principal positions held and dates; please briefly describe primary responsibilities for each position)

6. Professional Recognition (honors, awards, prizes)

7. Contributions of Record (list 5-10 significant publications, patents, or other contributions)

8. Noteworthy Public Services (boards, committees, etc)

9. Please describe, in 300 words or less, the accomplishments of the candidate that, in your opinion, qualify him/her for the ACP award for Research Excellence in Constraint Programming.

 

Answers to the following questions will assist in the evaluation process:

 

* Which specific accomplishments made by the candidate merit the Award?

* Where does the candidate stand in comparison to other scientists in the field of CP?

* What impacts have the contributions of the candidate had on other fields (AI, OR, computer science, etc.), or on society?

* If some of the candidate's contributions involved a team effort, what specifically were the candidate's contributions?

 

 

_____________________________ Reference Form _______________________________

 

REFERENCE FORM: ACP AWARD FOR RESEARCH EXCELLENCE IN CONSTRAINT PROGRAMMING

Please answer, as completely as possible, Questions 1 to 5 by editing this form directly, and email to secretary@cp-online.org.

The email submission must be in plain text (ASCII) and the answer to Question 5 must be limited to 300 words. Regarding Question 5, it is important to show evidence that the nominee has generated some of the most important and influential work in the CP field. Effective letters will, therefore, emphasize what the nominee has done and why it matters.

The information on this form is confidential. Neither the candidate nor the nominator will be informed of the views you express.

1. Reference's Name and Affiliation (first, middle, last; address; telephone; fax; and email address)

2. Nominator's Name

3. Candidate's Name

4. A reference is required to have been at "arm's length" from the candidate for the past 6 years, which here means being at a different institution from, not having supervised or been supervised by, and not having done joint work with the candidate. Please declare here any association you have ever had with the candidate.

5. Please describe, in 300 words or less, the accomplishments of the candidate that, in your opinion, qualify him/her for the ACP award for Research Excellence in Constraint Programming.

Answers to the following questions will assist in the evaluation process:

* Which specific accomplishments made by the candidate merit the Award?

* Where does the candidate stand in comparison to other scientists in the field of Constraint Programming?

* What impacts have the contributions of the candidate had on other fields (AI, OR, computer science, etc), or on society?

* If some of the candidate's contributions involved a team effort, what specifically were the candidate's contributions?

 

____________________________________________________________________________

 

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS FOR THE

Association for Constraint Programming

DOCTORAL RESEARCH AWARD 2009

 

OVERVIEW

The ACP Doctoral Research Award will be awarded every year to a promising young researcher working in the area of constraint programming and who defended his/her thesis between January and December of the previous two years. The award, in the form of a certificate, will be presented at the CP 2009 conference, where the winning researcher will present a talk on the topic of his/her doctoral dissertation.

 

ELIGIBILITY

Eligible doctoral researchers are those who defended their doctoral thesis between January 1, 2007 and December 31st 2008 in the area of constraint programming. The researcher must be a current member of the Association for Constraint Programming.

 

NOMINATION PROCESS

Nominations must be made by the thesis supervisor, who is responsible for ensuring that the following items are submitted to the secretary of the ACP at secretary@cp-online.org.

1. A URL to a zip-file containing the following items:

- A PDF version of the dissertation. No specific language for the dissertation is imposed;

- A PDF of an extended abstract of the doctoral dissertation, 3-5 pages in length, written in English;

- PDF versions of each of up to five papers published at international peer-reviewed conferences or journals based on the work reported in

the doctoral dissertation;

- A PDF description, and pointer to, any software or systems developed during the research;

- A PDF version of a nomination letter from the supervisor of the research.

 

2. In addition to the supervisor's nomination letter, two additional letters should be forwarded directly to the secretary of the ACP from two referees, selected by the dissertation supervisor, supporting the submission and stating their assessment of why the thesis should win the award. These letters will not be shown to the research supervisor or the candidate.

 

TIMEFRAME

Deadline for nominations: Monday 31st May 2009

Notification: Monday 17th August 2009

 

 

SELECTION

The selection of the winning candidate is based on the originality, impact, and quality of the research work. The evaluation will consider all contributions to the CP community, including publications, software and systems.

The work of the candidates will be reviewed by a committee of researchers selected by the ACP Executive Committee, based on the nominations received.

 

____________________________________________________________________________

 

OTHER NEWS

 

Compact Spring Course on Rule-based Programming

Venice, May 18-22, 2009 at Universita' Ca' Foscari Venezia

Prof. Dr. Thom Frühwirth, University of Ulm, Germany

http://www.informatik.uni-ulm.de/pm/mitarbeiter/fruehwirth/constraint-rule-programming-course.html

 

Call for Nominations

Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Computational Logic

Details here.

Call for Nominations: "ICAPS Influential Paper Award

Details here.

 

ERCIM Working Group on Constraints

The 2009 ERCIM Workshop on Constraint Solving and Constraint Logic Programming (CSCLP 2009) will be held at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya in Spain. The workshop will cover all aspects of constraint and logic programming, including various foundational issues, implementation techniques, new applications as well as teaching issues. Particular emphasis is on assessing the current state of the art and identifying future directions.

Researchers are invited to submit papers covering all aspects of research on constraint and logic programming. Standard research papers, position papers and work-in-progress papers describing current projects are all welcome. A Springer LNAI volume is usually published after the workshop.

The organisers of this year's workshop are:

Javier Larrosa, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Spainhttp://www.lsi.upc.edu/~larrosa/

Barry O'Sullivan, 4C - University College Cork, Irelandhttp://www.cs.ucc.ie/~osullb

Further details about the workshop can be found at: http://www.lsi.upc.edu/~larrosa/CSCLP2009.html

 

 

CONSTRAINTS Journal Accepted Papers

Volume 14, Issue 2 (2009)
The contents of the issue as well as links to the authors' final versions (no subscription required) and to the final published versions (subscription required) can be found here.

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.

Volume 4 is a special issue dedicated to Autonomous Search. It is edited by Youssef Hamadi, Eric Monfroy, and Frederic Saubion.

 

Other Publications

Book:

Optimization in the Energy Industry

Series: Energy Systems

Kallrath, J.; Pardalos, P.M.; Rebennack, S.; Scheidt, M. (Eds.)

Springer 2009, XXI, 533 p. 152 illus., Hardcover

ISBN: 978-3-540-88964-9

http://www.springer.com/math/book/978-3-540-88964-9

 

Special Issues CFPs

 

  • Special issue of Constraints: Constraint-based approaches to preference modelling and reasoning

Guest editors: P. Meseguer, F. Rossi, T. Schiex

Submissions deadline: June 15, 2009

Details here.

  • Journal of Heuristics: Special Issue on "Unconstrained Quadratic Binary Optimization"

Guest Editors:

Gary Kochenberger, University of Colorado at Denver

Fred Glover, OptTek, Inc., BoulderCO

 

Submission of papers: December 31, 2009

 

Authors should submit their manuscripts to the Journal of Heuristics

Editorial Manager http://heur.edmgr.com. Select "Special Issue: 0-1

Quadratic Optimization" as the article type.

Details here

 

Thematic Issue on Memetic Algorithms in Scheduling of Journal of Memetic Computing
http://www.springer.com/engineering/journal/12293

Details here

Special issue of Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence: "Learning and intelligent optimization"

Guest editors:

Roberto Battiti, Universita' degli Studi di Trento, Italy

Bart Selman, Cornell University, USA

Thomas Stuetzle, Universite' Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium

Details here

 

 

Events

 

CI-Sched 2009, 2009 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Scheduling, March 30 - April 2, 2009, Sheraton Music City Hotel, Nashville, TN, USA.

2009 Workshop on Automated Reasoning: Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice, 21st - 22nd April 2009, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK.

DALT 2009 held in conjunction with AAMAS 2009, 7th International Workshop on Declarative Agent Languages and Technologies, 11 or 12 May, 2009, Budapest, Hungary.

ASP-competition 2009, The Second Answer Set Programming Competition, 15/05/2009-15/06/2009. Registration of teams: 01/03/2009-01/05/2009.

FLAIRS 2009, Special Track on AI PLANNING AND SCHEDULING, 22nd International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference, 19th-21st May, 2009, Sanibel Island, Florida, USA.

AI'09 GRADUATE STUDENT SYMPOSIUM, Twenty-second Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence, May 24, 2009, Kelowna, British Columbia.

AI'09, Twenty-second Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence, May 25-27, 2009, Kelowna, British Columbia.

SweConsNet Workshop 2009 (Collocated with the SAIS Workshop 2009: www.sais.se/sais2009), The 8th workshop of SweConsNet, the Network for Sweden-based researchers and practitioners of Constraint programming, May 27th, 2009, Linköping, Sweden.

BR-OPT (in conjunction with CP-AI-OR 2009), Workshop on Bound Reduction techniques for Constraint Programming and Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programming, 28 May, 2009, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.

Workshop on Optimization in Health and Medicine (Pre-conference event of CP-AI-OR 2009), 28 May 2009, CarnegieMellonUniversity, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Paper submissions deadline: 13 April 2009.

CP-AI-OR 2009, Sixth International Conference on Integration of Artificial Intelligence and Operations Research Techniques in Constraint Programming for Combinatorial Optimization Problems, May 27-31, 2009, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.

PSI 2009, Seventh International Andrei Ershov Memorial Conference PERSPECTIVES OF SYSTEM INFORMATICS, 15-19 June, 2009, Novosibirsk, Akademgorodok, Russia.

WFLP 2009, 18th International Workshop on Functional and (Constraint) Logic Programming, June 28, 2009, Brasilia, Brazil. Abstract Submission: April 20, 2009. Full Paper Submission: April 26, 2009.

SAT 2009, 12th International Conference on Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing, June 30 - July 3, 2009, Swansea, Wales, UK.

TAP 2009, The Third International Conference on Tests And Proofs, July 2-3, 2009, ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

TIMETABLING AND ROSTERING, Stream at EURO XXIII 2009 Conference, July 5-8,2009, Bonn, Germany.

SARA 2009, The Eighth Symposium on Abstraction, Reformulation and Approximation, July 6-9, 2009, Lake Arrowhead, CA, USA. Paper and Extended Abstraction submissions deadline: April 8, 2009.

SoCS-09, International Symposium on Combinatorial Search, July 8-10, 2009, Lake Arrowhead, California, USA. Paper submission deadline: April 4, 2009.

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

ICLP'09 Doctoral Consortium, Fifth ICLP Doctoral Consortium, International Conference on Logic Programming, July 14-17, 2009, Pasadena, California, USA. Paper Submission Deadline: April 10, 2009 (strict).

CLPSE 2009 (Satellite event of ICLP 2009), 4th International Workshop on (Constraint) Logic Programming and Software Engineering, July, 2009, Pasadena, California, USA. Paper submissions deadline: April 6, 2009.

CHR 2009 (Co-located with ICLP 2009), Sixth International Workshop on Constraint Handling Rules, July 14-17, 2009, Pasadena, California. Submission of abstract: April 17, 2009. Submission of paper: April 22, 2009.

CULP 2009 (Co-located with ICLP 2009), COMMERCIAL USERS OF LOGIC PROGRAMMING, July 13-17, 2009, Pasadena, CA, USA.

WLPE 2009 (Satellite event of ICLP 2009), The 19th Workshop on Logic-based methods in Programming Environments, Paper Submission: April 30, 2009.

ICLP 2009 (co-located with IJCAI 2009), 25th International Conference on Logic Programming, July 14-17, 2009, Pasadena, California, USA. Paper registration: February 27, 2009.

IWPSS-09, 6th International Workshop on Planning and Scheduling for Space, July 19th - 21st, 2009, Pasadena, California, USA.

CADE-22, 22nd International Conference on Automated Deduction, August 2-7, 2009, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

CSR 2009, 4th INTERNATIONAL COMPUTER SCIENCE SYMPOSIUM IN RUSSIA, August 18-23, 2009, Novosibirsk, Russia.

SLS 2009, Workshop on Engineering Stochastic Local Search Algorithms---Designing, Implementing and Analyzing Effective Heuristics, 3-5 September, 2009. Brussels, Belgium. Paper submissions deadline: April 15, 2009.

ACM PPDP 2009, 11th ACM-SIGPLAN* International Symposium on Principles and Practice of Declarative Programming, September 7-9, 2009, Coimbra, Portugal. Submission deadline: May 7, 2009.

FroCoS'09, 7th International Symposium on FRONTIERS OF COMBINING SYSTEMS, September 16-18th, 2009, Trento, Italy. Abstract submission deadline: April 26th, 2009. Full paper submission deadline: May 3rd, 2009.

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. Submission deadline: June 18, 2009.

ICAPS 2009, 19th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, September 19-23, 2009, Thessaloniki, Greece. Paper submission deadline: April 22, 2009. Doctoral Consortium Papers due: June 26, 2009.

CSC'2009, The Fourth International CSP Solver Competition: Call for Solvers and Benchmarks.

CP 2009, The 15th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, September 21-24, 2009, Lisbon, Portugal. Paper submissions deadline: 12 Noon BST, Thursday 30th April 2009. Tutorial Proposal submissions deadline: May 22, 2009.

SYNASC 2009 11th International Symposium on Symbolic and Numeric Algorithms for Scientific Computing, September 26-29, 2009, Timisoara, Romania. Special sessions / Workshops / Tutorials proposals: 20 April 2009. Papers submission: 20 May 2009.

HM 2009, Sixth International Workshop on HYBRID METAHEURISTICS, October 16-17, 2009, Udine, Italy. Submission of papers: May 24, 2009.

RR 2009, The Third International Conference on Web Reasoning and Rule Systems, October 25-26, 2009, Chantilly, Virginia, USA. Abstract submission: June 14, 2009. Paper submission: June 28, 2009.

LAGOS'09, V Latin-American Algorithms, Graphs and Optimization Symposium Gramado (Rio Grande do Sul), Brazil November 3-7, 2009. Submission deadline: April 30, 2009.

MICAI-2009, 8th Mexican International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, November 9 to 13, Guanajuato, Gto., México. Submission deadline: May 16th (abstract), May 23th (full paper)

ASAI 2009, X Argentine Symposium on Artificial Intelligence. 24th - 25th August 2009 - Mar del Plata, Argentina. Deadline for submissions of papers: April 27, 2009.

SIO 2009, SIMPOSIO ARGENTINO DE INVESTIGACION OPERATIVA 2009. Deadline for submissions of papers: April 27, 2009. 24th - 28th August 2009 - Mar del Plata, Argentina.

 

 

 

 

 

Career news

MSR PhD Scholarship on Parallel SAT Solving

More

 

Ass't Prof. in Computing Science at Uppsala Univ., Sweden

More

 

Microsoft Research PhD Scholarship on Autonomous Local Search

www.info.univ-angers.fr/pub/saubion/PHD/Index.htm

 

Vacant position at SINTEF

SINTEF ICT has a vacant temporary research position within parallel

methods for transportation optimization, see

http://www.sintef.no/Home/Working-in-SINTEF/Vacant-positions/

 

Please note that a brief and concise application with CV should be sent

by e-mail to Nora.Gibb@sintef.no as soon as possible and before April 17.

 

 

Oxford University Computing Lab

Two Fully Funded Doctoral Studentships in Artificial Intelligence/Computational Logic

http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/news/79-full.html