Volume 6, Number 0, January 2010

Constraint Programming News

volume 6, number 0, January 2010

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 October-December 2009.

ACP.1. Changes to the ACP Executive Committee

The 2010 Executive Committee comprises the following members (along with their elected terms):

  • John Hooker (Elected 2008-2012)
  • Pedro Meseguer (Elected 2007-2010)
  • Barry O'Sullivan (Elected 2008-2012)
  • Karen Petrie (Elected 2008-2010)
  • Thomas Schiex (Elected 2007-2010)
  • Peter Stuckey (Elected 2006-2012)
  • Roland Yap (Elected 2008-2010)

On behalf of the ACP the EC would like to offer its sincerest thanks to the following whose terms on the Executive Committee came to an end at the end of December 2009:

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

Each of these members have served the CP community extremely well during their time on the EC, for which we're very grateful.

ACP.2. Call for Bids for CP-2012

We are circulating the Call for Bids for CP 2012.

Call for proposals to host CP-2012

We invite proposals to host the 18th International Conference on the Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP-2012). Proposals are due on or before April 1st, 2010. These proposals will be evaluated by the Executive Committee of the Association for Constraint Programming and a decision made for the site shortly afterwards.

The CP conferences are the premier international conferences on constraint programming. They have been held annually since 1995. CP 2010 will be held in St. Andrews (Scotland) and in Perugia (Italy) in 2011. Previous CP conferences have been held in Lisbon (Portugal), Sydney (AUS), Providence RI (USA), Nantes (Frances), Sitges (Spain), Toronto (Canada), Kinsale (Ireland), Cornell (USA), Paphos (Cyprus), Singapore, Alexandria (USA), Pisa (Italy), Schloss Hagenberg (Austria), Cambridge (USA), and Cassis (France).

Proposals should be up to two pages of plain text and should address the following numbered topics:

  1. Proposal for conference chair(s).
  2. Local CP community support.
  3. University, government and industry support, especially financial.
  4. Proposed dates, and flexibility around these dates.
  5. Co-located events that might be held alongside CP.
  6. Conference and exhibition facilities (CP typically attracts between 200 and 250 delegates).
  7. Accommodation and food services.
  8. Site accessibility, attractiveness, and desirability.
  9. Previous experience in running conferences and workshops.
  10. Provisional budget.

If available, please include URLs to any additional information (e.g. web site for the conference venue or hotel).

Guidelines for the CP conference organization, as well as the duties of the conference chair(s), can be found on the ACP web site.

Proposals should be sent to the secretary of the Association for Constraint Programming committee preferably by email to secretary@a4cp.org . In preparing a proposal, please feel free to address questions (e.g. regarding the suitability of the proposed dates) to the same address, or to any member of the ACP Executive Committee.

ACP.3. The 2010 ACP Summer School on Constraint Programming

The 2010 Summer School will be held in a CNRS Center, Centre Paul Langevin, located in Aussoix). It is in the National Parc of la Vanoise, in Savoie (France): http://www.caes.cnrs.fr/Vacances/Explorer/Aussois The school is being organised by Yves Deville and Christine Solnon. A call for participation will be issued shortly by the organisers.

ACP.4. Call Surplus from CP 2008

Toby Walsh, CP Conference Chair in 2008, has finalised the accounts for CP 2008 which was held in Sydney. The ACP provides seed money for the conference and sponsorship funding for the doctoral programme. We are delighted to report that CP 2008 has declared a good surplus for the community. A total of AUD 23.5k will be returned to the ACP, which includes the seed funds provided to the conference by the association.

ACP.5. Sponsorships

The ACP has agreed to provide sponsorship to CPAIOR 2010, which will be held in Bologna. See http://cpaior2010.ing.unibo.it

OTHER NEWS

COST-ADT Doctoral School on Computational Social Choice. April 2010

The European Science Foundation's COST Action on Algorithmic Decision Theory will sponsor a doctoral school on Computational Social Choice during 9-14 April 2010 in Estoril, near Lisbon, Portugal.

All interested PhD students, working in fields such as Computational Social Choice, (classical) Social Choice Theory and related areas of Mathematical Economics, Multiagent Systems, Artificial Intelligence, Logic, Theoretical Computer Science, as well as Operations Research and Decision Analysis, are encouraged to apply (by sending a CV and a short cover letter).

The doctoral school can accommodate up to 30 participants. The registration fee is EUR 225 (full pension). Applications must be received by the end of January 2010.

Further (preliminary) information is available at http://algodec.org

<

p>ICKEPS 2009 results

I just want to inform you that the detailed results of ICKEPS 2009 competition are now available on-line at http://kti.mff.cuni.cz/~bartak/ICKEPS2009/results.html We also started a new initiative whose goal is to bring the results of ICKEPS to a wider planning community. At the competition web pages you can find a repository with domains generated by some competing tools. This repository shows how the real planning problems may look like.

Kind regards,
Roman Bart‡k
On behalf of ICKEPS 2009 organizers

Press Release FP7 Project

17 November 2009
Cork Constraint Computation Centre
Department of Computer Science
University College Cork

The Cork Constraint Computation Centre (4C), Department of Computer Science, University College Cork, will be working with thirteen other partners across Europe on a two and a half year EU FP7 project, FlexWood, to enable better use of timber resources. The project aims to determine the optimal ways of cutting a forest and distributing its products effectively, and in particular to reduce wastage, which is currently estimated at 700M\200 annually across Europe. Crucial to this research is the technology provided by a local Irish partner TreeMetrics to scan standing trees for their shape. The FlexWood research group at 4C is headed by Dr James Little. The overall FlexWood lead is Professor Barbara Koch of the University of Freiburg, Institute for Forest Economy, Department of Remote Sensing & Land Information Systems.

The project brings together European Forestry Researchers from the disciplines of Forest Inventory, Terrestrial & Airborne Measurement, Quality Measurement, Harvesting, Timber Logistics, Industrial Requirements, Timber Processing and Advanced Decision-support Systems.

The focus is to deliver a new generation of software tools designed to match the forest with industry demands through innovative models and algorithms in harvesting simulation and distribution. This software will be delivered through Web2.0 based portals allowing freer interaction and discussion between buyers and sellers based on informed decision-support from the FlexWood system.

For further information contact: Dr James Little, j.little@4c.ucc.ie 021 420 5957.

ITC2007 Examination timetabling problem: Drools Planner implementation

I posted a presentation movie on Parleys Beta about the ITC2007 Examination timetabling problem and the Drools Planner implementation: http://beta.parleys.com/#st=5&id=1714

Feed-back is welcome on the blog: http://blog.athico.com/2009/12/drools-planner-aka-drools-solver-devoxx.html

With kind regards,
Geoffrey De Smet

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 4 (2009)

  • Lexicographically-ordered Constraint Satisfaction Problems
    Eugene C. Freuder, Robert Heffernan, Richard J. Wallace, Nic Wilson
  • Evaluating the Impact of AND/OR Search on 0-1 Integer Linear Programming
    Radu Marinescu, Rina Dechter
  • Constraint Models for Graceful Graphs
    Barbara M. Smith, Jean-François Puget
  • Improving Inter-Block Backtracking with Interval Newton
    Bertrand Neveu, Gilles Trombettoni, Gilles Chabert
  • Grammar Constraints
    Serdar Kadioglu, Meinolf Sellmann
  • Erratum to "Reformulating Table Constraints using Functional Dependencies - An Application to Explanation Generation"
    Hadrien Cambazard, Barry O'Sullivan

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

Books

Title: Logical Methods in Computer Science

We started this fully refereed, open access, free electronic journal in January 2005, intending to create a high-level platform for publications in all theoretical and practical areas in computer science involving logical methods, taken in a broad sense. We are now on Issue 3 of Volume 5 (there are four issues a year). So far, we have received more than 350 submissions of which we have published 162. In addition to individual submissions, our journal publishes special issues, e.g., of selected papers of high-level international conferences such as LICS, IJCAR, CAV, CSL, and RTA.

We are continuing actively to develop the journal. For example, we accept survey articles, and are developing `live' surveys, which can be continually updated as knowledge progresses. In another direction, we are considering allowing authors to provide additional material of an expository nature, such as slides and videos, to enable them to interest a wider spectrum of readers in their contribution.

The journal is an overlay of CoRR, the computer science repository of arXiv. There are no fees for authors nor for readers. Every paper is refereed by two or more referees, and high standards are applied. The editorial board consists of about sixty top specialists in all areas of logic in computer science.

The journal is covered by Mathematical Reviews, the ISI Web of Knowledge, and the DBLP Database.
We welcome your comments and suggestions, and we seek your contributions!
For more information please consult our web pages: www.lmcs-online.org

Yours,

Editor-in-Chief: Dana S. Scott dana.scott@cs.cmu.edu
Managing Editors: Benjamin C. Pierce bcpierce@cis.upenn.edu
Gordon D. Plotkin gdp@inf.ed.ac.uk
Moshe Y. Vardi vardi@cs.rice.edu
Executive Editors: Jiri Adamek adamek@iti.cs.tu-bs.de
Stefan Milius s.milius@tu-bs.de




Title: <b

Sequential Decision-making Problems - representations and solutions
Author: Cédric Pralet, Gérard Verfaillie et Thomas Schiex
ISTE/Wiley, collection "Programmation par contraintes",
http://iste.co.uk/index.php?f=a&ACTION=View&id=317
ISBN: 9781848211742

Abstract: Numerous formalisms have been designed to model and solve decision-making problems. Some formalisms, such as constraint networks, can express ÒsimpleÓ decision problems, while others take into account uncertainties (probabilities, possibilities...), unfeasible decisions, and utilities (additive or not). In the first part of this book, we introduce a generic algebraic framework that encompasses and unifies a large number of such formalisms. This formalism, called the PlausibilityÐFeasibilityÐUtility (PFU) framework, is based on algebraic structures, graphical models, and sequences of quantifications. This work on knowledge representation is completed by a work on algorithms for answering queries formulated in the PFU framework. The algorithms defined are based on variable elimination or tree search, and work on a new generic architecture for local computations called multi-operator cluster DAGs.


HDR and PhD Thesis

Gilles Trombettoni (COPRIN, Sophia Antipolis),
Résolution de systèmes d'équations : l'essor de la programmation par contraintes sur intervalles
HDR Thesis (Habilitation à diriger des recherches), 8th of december 2009, Sophia Antipolis, France.
http://www-sop.inria.fr/coprin/trombe/annonce_hdr.html


Bertrand Mazure (CRIL, Lens),
SAT et au-delà de SAT : Modèles et Algorithmes
HDR Thesis (Habilitation à diriger des recherches), to be defended: 29th of January 2010, CRIL, France
http://www.cril.univ-artois.fr/~mazure/publis.php


Jean-Philippe Métivier (GREYC, Caen),
Relaxation de contraintes globales avec préférences
PhD Thesis, to be defended: 9th of april 2010, GREYC, France.


SPECIAL ISSUES CFPS

Recent Advances in Constraints
A volume of Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (Springer)
Editors: Javier Larrosa and Barry O'Sullivan

SCOPE
This book will continue a series edited by LNAI since 2002. Its contents will be:

  • A selection of papers from the annual workshop on Constraint Solving and Constraint Logic Programming CSCLP of the ERCIM Working Group on Constraints, which was held in UPC Barcelona earlier this year. Authors of papers that have been presented at the workshop are therefore invited to submit final versions that take into account the discussion at the workshop for this volume.
  • A selection of papers submitted to this open call to the constraints community, even when they have not been presented at the workshop.


All submissions will be peer-reviewed.

IMPORTANT DATES
Intention to Submit: Please upload a title and abstract to the submission system as soon as possible to facilitate preparations for reviewing. These details can be revised at any time.
Papers Due: Monday 25th of January 2010;
Notifications: Early March 2010.
Papers should be formatted in Springer LNCS style and should be 15-20 pages in length.
To submit your paper please use the following web submission system: https://www.easychair.org/login.cgi?conf=rac2009



ENQUIRIES
Please send your enquiries to either


AI Space Odyssey, Special Issue of IEEE Intelligent Systems
Submissions due for review: 19 February 2010
Publication date: September/October 2010

http://www.computer.org/portal/web/computingnow/iscfp5

IEEE Intelligent Systems seeks original papers describing research on AI in Space. This topic has been the focus of earlier special issues, but this 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 multiagent systems;
  • machine learning;
  • procedure-execution monitoring and aiding;
  • natural language processing and dialogue systems;
  • decision support; and
  • 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 that, 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/intelligent/author.htm). 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:

Events

ISAIM 2010 , 11th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics, January 6-8, 2010, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

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.

DAMP 2010 (Co-located withPOPL 2010), Workshop on Declarative Aspects of Multicore Programming, January 20-22, 2010, Madrid, SPAIN.

VMCAI 2010 (Co-located with POPL 2010), The Eleventh International Conference on Verification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation, January 17-19, 2010, Madrid, Spain.

PEPM'10 (Affiliated with POPL'10), ACM SIGPLAN 2010 Workshop on Partial Evaluation and Program Manipulation, January 18-19, 2010, Madrid, Spain.

WFLP 2010 (Co-located with POPL 2010), 19th Workshop on Functional and (Constraint) Logic Programming, January 17th, 2010, Madrid, Spain.

CSP track of ACM SAC 2010 , 25th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, March 22 - 26, 2010, Sierre, Switzerland.

CSTVA'10 (in conjunction with ICST 2010), 2nd Workshop on Constraints in Software Testing, Verification and Analysis, April 10, 2010, Paris, France. Submission of extended abstract: January 15, 2010.

8th International Heinz Nixdorf Symposium , "Advanced Manufacturing and Sustainable Logistics", April 21-22, 2010, Paderborn, Germany.

LPAR-16 , 16th International Conference on Logic for Programming, Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning, April 25 - May 1, 2010, Dakar, Senegal. Abstract submission: January 5, 2010, Paper submission: January 12, 2010.

SPARK (an ICAPS workshop), ICAPS 2010 Scheduling and Planning Applications woRKshop, May 12 or 13, 2010, Toronto, Canada. Deadline for papers: February 15, 2010.

COPLAS'10 (To be held during ICAPS 2010), ICAPS 2010 Workshop on Constraint Satisfaction Techniques for Planning and Scheduling Problems, May 12-13, 2010, Toronto, Canada. Submission deadline: February 15th, 2010.

KEPS2010 (during ICAPS'10), ICAPS 2010 Workshop on Knowledge Engineering for Planning and Scheduling (KEPS), May 12-13, 2010, Toronto, Canada. Submission deadline: February 15th, 2010.

POMDP Practioners Workshop: solving real-world POMDP problems (Workshop at ICAPS-2010), May 11 or 12, 2010, Toronto, Canada. Submission deadline: February 15th, 2010.

ICAPS 2010 , Twentieth International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, May 12-16, 2010, Toronto, Canada. Proposals of demonstrations and exhibits: 15 February 2010.

Special Track on AI PLANNING AND SCHEDULING at FLAIRS-23, 23rd International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference, May 19-21, 2010, Daytona Beach, Florida, USA.

ALIO-INFORMS 2010 Joint International Meeting, June 6-9, 2010, Buenos Aires.

CP-AI-OR 2010 , The Seventh International Conference on Integration of Artificial Intelligence and Operations Research Techniques in Constraint Programming, June 14-18, 2010, Bologna, Italy. Long Paper Abstract due: January 18, 2010, Full paper due: February 1, 2010, Short Paper Abstract due: February 1, 2010, Short Paper due: February 10, 2010, Workshop proposal due: January 15, 2010.

CSR 2010 , 5th INTERNATIONAL COMPUTER SCIENCE SYMPOSIUM IN RUSSIA, June 16-20, 2010, Kazan, Russia.

IWS 2010 (a satellite workshop of FLoC 2010), International Workshop on Strategies in Rewriting, Proving, and Programming, July 9 2010, Edinburgh, UK. Abstract submission: March 26, 2010.

SOCS-2010 (co-located with AAAI-10), The Third International Symposium on Combinatorial Search, July 9-10, 2010, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Submission: April 2, 2010.

AAAI-10 , Twenty-Fourth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, July 11-15, 2010, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Abstract Submission Deadline: January 18, 2010, Paper Submission Deadline: January 21, 2010.

ASPOCP 2010 (Collocated with ICLP 2010), 3rd Workshop on Answer Set Programming and Other Computing Paradigms, July 16-19, 2010, Edinburgh (Scotland, U.K). Submission deadline: March 26, 2010.

ICLP-DC 2010 (Collocated with ICLP 2010), Sixth ICLP Doctoral Student Consortium, July 16-19, 2010, Edinburgh (Scotland, U.K). Submission Deadline: April 11, 2010.

ICLP 2010 (part of FLoC 2010), 26th International Conference on Logic Programming, July 16-19, 2010, Edinburgh, Scotland, U.K. Submission deadline: January 26, 2010.

LoCoCo 2010 , Workshop on Logics for Component Configuration, Edinburgh, Scotland, July 10, 2010, at FLoC.

CHR 2010 (co-located with ICLP 2010, part of FLOC 2010), Seventh International Workshop on Constraint Handling Rules, July 20, 2010, Edinburgh (Scotland). Abstract submission deadline: April 14, 2010, Paper submission deadline: April 20, 2010.

ISSAC 2010 , International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Computation, July 25-28, 2010, Munich, Germany. Abstract submission: Thursday 14 January 2010, Paper submission: Thursday 21 January 2010.

ECAI-2010 , The Nineteenth European Conference on Artificial Intelligence 16-20 August 2010, Lisbon, Portugal. Deadline for submission of abstracts: 15 February 2010, Deadline for submission of full papers: 22 February 2010.

JELIA 2010 , 12th European Conference on Logics in Artificial Intelligence, September 13-15, 2010, Helsinki, Finland. Abstract submission deadline: May 3, 2010, Paper submission deadline: May 7, 2010.

JFPC 2010 , Journees Francophones de programmtion par contraintes, 9-11 june, Caen, France. Submission deadline: March 1, 2010.

Career news

Doctoral Studies in Symbolic Computation at RISC-Linz

The Research Institute for Symbolic Computation offers positions for Doctoral studies in symbolic computation starting in 2010.

Symbolic Computation is the subarea of mathematics and computer science which solves problems on symbolic objects representable on a computer. The Research Institute for Symbolic Computation (RISC) in the castle of Hagenberg, Austria, is an international institute with its research focus on various branches of symbolic computation. Research interests of RISC include:

  • Algebraic Geometry
  • Algorithmic Combinatorics
  • Automated Reasoning
  • Parallel and Distributed Computing
  • Computer Algebra
  • Scientific Computing

RISC has a program for doctoral studies. About 25 Ph.D. students are currently participating in this program. In the frame of its doctoral program, RISC offers:

  • a curriculum with lectures and seminars in English,
  • fellowships for covering living expenses in Austria,
  • access to latest research results in the field,
  • an inspiring location in a medieval castle, and
  • contacts to leading scientists at RISC and around the world.

RISC seeks applications of excellent and highly motivated students with a university degree in mathematics and/or computer science. Experience in symbolic computation is an advantage but no formal requirement.
For starting your Ph.D. studies at RISC in October, please send your application by February 15. Please check our website for further details.

Research Institute for Symbolic Computation
Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria
http://www.risc.jku.at/education/phd/

Postdoc position in SAT solving

The Department of Mathematical Sciences at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center has a postdoctoral position available in the area of SAT and SMT solvers, and in particular how techniques from SAT and SMT solvers can be used to help solve mixed-integer programming problems. We are looking for someone with expertise in SAT and SMT solving, and ideally with good programming skills in C++ and / or Java. Experience with constraint programming and mixed-integer programming is also desirable.

Inquiries and applications for this position should be sent to Andrew Davenport at davenport 'curly at sign' us.ibm.com

Job opening for constraint-propagation (ECLiPSe) expert in Singapore

Experiments in social psychology have shown that people spontaneously attribute intentions, beliefs, emotions, and other mental states to simply-animated, moving figures. Although there is research on what factors affect people's tendency to make such attributions, there has been little work on developing a process model.

Although our initial aim is to develop a process-oriented account, we believe that a computational model of such attributions could have a variety of practical applications such as monitoring systems for assisted living and for security.

Our approach involves creating a knowledge base that links movement patterns to mental states that typically motivate them. An important aspect of the movement pattern knowledge is a variety of geometric spatial constraints, which need to be formulated in a logic-based constraint framework such as ECLiPSe (http://eclipse-clp.org/). We are looking for a recent PhD (or highly motivated science graduate) who has experience with constraint propagation techniques and an interest in cognitive or perceptual modelling. Hands-on experience with ECLiPSe is strongly preferred.

To apply, follow this link:
http://sg.dimension.jobsdb.com/career/Default.asp...

Microsoft Research Constraint Reasoning Group (http://research.microsoft.com/constraint-reasoning) three-month internship positions

The Microsoft Research Constraint Reasoning Group (http://research.microsoft.com/constraint-reasoning) is offering several three-month internship positions. Jobs are open to PhD students and to post-doctoral researchers with a primary interest in search and optimization. We welcome in particular applicants that have complementary interests in:

  • Online Stochastic Optimization
  • Graphical models
  • Problem decomposition
  • Automated planning
  • Monte-Carlo techniques

The goal of these internships is to conduct fundamental research driven by long term Microsoft applications. More information about the MSRC internship program can be found here, http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/jobs/intern/about_uk.aspx
Interested applicants have to register here, https://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/jobs/intern.aspx

Work location: Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Duration: 12 weeks.
Required availability: Summer, fall 2010.
Contact: {romatees, lucasb} at Microsoft dot com

The Australian National University is advertising two academic positions:

  • Artificial intelligence (ML, KR, planning & scheduling, diagnosis, and disciplines at the intersection e.g. RL)
  • Research intensive (reduced teaching load)
  • Tenure track (5 years in the first instance)
  • Involvement in NICTA (Australia's Research Center of Excellence in ICT)
  • Australian level B/C (roughly equivalent to beginning/established assistant professor at top US institution)
  • Salary: 76K- 102K AUD (at today's rate: 70K-93K USD, or 48K-65K Euros) + 17% super
  • One of the two positions is reserved for a woman

See details: http://jobs.anu.edu.au/PositionDetail.aspx?p=1043
Deadline for applications: 14 February 2010
Contact: Sylvie.Thiebaux@anu.edu.au, Bob.Williamson@anu.edu.au