2019 Quarters 3 and 4

REPORT FROM THE ASSOCIATION FOR CONSTRAINT PROGRAMMING

This is a short summary of activities within the ACP during the months July-December 2019.

The 2019 ACP Executive Committee (EC) comprises the following people, in alphabetical order:

  • Sophie Demassey - Treasurer
  • Maria Garcia de la Banda - President
  • Emmanuel Hebrard
  • Michele Lombardi
  • Laurent Michel (ex-officio, non-voting)
  • Claude-Guy Quimper - Conference Coordinator
  • Christian Schulte - Secretary
  • Charlotte Truchet

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

ACP.1: CP 2021

The selection of Program Chair (Laurent Michel), Conference Chairs (Carmen Gervet and Philippe Vismara) and venue (Montpellier, France) for the 27th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2021), has been finalised. The conference will take place around August-September, 2021 (dates still to be finalised).

ACP.2: ACP ACP Summer School 2020

The 2020 ACP summer school will take place June 22-24th Toulouse, France, organized by Christian Artigues, Frederic Koriche, Philippe Lacomme, Jean-Marie Lagniez, Frédéric Lardeux, Nadjib Lazaar, Arnaud Malapert, Margaux Nattaf, Marie Pelleau, and Caroline Prodhon.

This year's topic is "Combinatorial Optimization, Constraint Programming and Machine Learning", with technical lectures and practical sessions.

Prior knowledge of Constraint Programming is not required, but if you already have some experience in heuristics, mathematical programming or even constraint programming, then we think that you can benefit a lot from this summer school.

ACP.3: CP 2019 Conference

The annual conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming , was held in Stamford, CT, USA, in September 2019. There were 133 attendees at the conference. CP 2019 presented 46 selected articles from 118 submissions (full list here: https://cp2019.a4cp.org/accepted_papers.html) and 12 abstract papers presented in short oral presentations or posters (full list here: https://cp2019.a4cp.org/accepted_abstracts.html). The conference was organized according to the following topics/tracks: main technical track; Application Track, Computational Sustainability, CP and Life Sciences, CP, Data Science and Machine Learning, Multi-agent and parallel CP, Testing and Verification. We thank all the organizers for their substantial efforts on behalf of the CP community, especially conference co-chairs, Thomas Schiex and Simon de Givry and the Conference Chairs, David Bergman and Andre Cire.

During the general assembly of the ACP, which took place during the conference, the publishing policy of the ACP was discussed. The question is: should the CP community leave Springer, its historic editor, for an open science model? Notes on the presentations of both speakers (Thomas Schiex, on the "leave" side, and Eugene Freuder, on the "remain" side) are available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GHrtB7V2A8rFuKxwOVDac7FNNJodPJk2Pk5c8HVStIQ/edit?usp=sharing

ACP.4: Call for Outreach Initiatives

The Association for Constraint Programming (ACP) supports initiatives in favor of outreach to other scientific communities and industries. Our call for Outreach Initiatives is permanently open and available here: https://www.a4cp.org/events/outreach

ACP.5: Bids for CP2022

The ACP Executive Committee (EC) holds the annual International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP). Since the ACP plans CP conferences two years in advance, we now solicit bids for CP 2022.

If you are interested in organising a future CP conference, then you need to make a proposal to the Conference Coordinator of the EC (conf-coordinator@a4cp.org) by 31 May 2020. The proposal must be made by those volunteering to be Conference Chairs (CC) of the conference and volunteering to be responsible for the budget and local arrangements in the proposed city. Proposals must follow the guidelines at http://www.a4cp.org/events/conference-organisation-policy and should address in brief all the following items:

  1. Location
  2. Possible dates
  3. Local organisers and brief description of previous experience organising similar events
  4. Conference facilities and hotels (with URLs if available)
  5. Availability of student accommodation
  6. Possible social events
  7. Preliminary budget and financial considerations (e.g. local sponsorship, cost of the conference facilities)
  8. Travel information
  9. Support of local and national organisations
  10. Collocated events that might be held alongside the conference
  11. Any other information that might be of relevance

The final decision will be made by the ACP EC, which also selects the Programme Chair for each year.