Volume 3, Number 2, July 2007

Constraint Programming News

volume 3, number 2, July 2007

            <h4>Editors: <br />
              <a target="_blank" href="http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~jlee/">Jimmy Lee</a> (events, career news) <br />
              <a target="_blank" href="http://www.sciences.univ-nantes.fr/info/perso/permanents/monfroy/">Eric Monfroy</a> (profiles, publications) <br />
              <a target="_blank" href="http://4c.ucc.ie/~tw/">Toby Walsh</a> (news, reports)</h4>
          </center>

  <h2>Contents</h2>
  <ul>
    <li><a href="#news">news</a>: ACP EC news, Dechter wins ACP award, AFPC </li>
    <li><a href="#publications">publications</a>: Constraint journal, PhD theses, recent books, special issues, web resources.</li>
    <li><a href="#events">events</a>: forthcoming conferences and workshops</li>
    <li><a href="#career">career news</a>: job adverts</li>
  </ul>
  <h2><a name="news" id="news">News</a></h2>
  <h3 align="justify">ACP EC</h3>
  <div align="justify">This is a short summary of the activities of the ACP EC during
    the months April-June 2007.
  </div>
  <h4 align="justify">ACP Research award</h4>
  <div align="justify">The call for nominations was sent out in April-May, and the 
    award committee (composed of C. Bessiere, E. Freuder, 
    P. Meseguer (chair), F. Rossi, P. Van Hentenryck) 
    decided to give the 2007 ACP award for research 
    excellence to Rina Dechter, for her multiple and significant
    contributions to CP.
    Rina will receive the award at CP 2007, where she will 
    be invited to give a talk about her reseach activities.
  </div>
  <h4 align="justify">DP feedback procedure</h4>
  <div align="justify">Six years after the first CP doctoral program in 2001, the ACP EC decided
    to have a procedure where students and organizers can give their 
    opinions about the various aspects of the doctoral program, in order to 
    possibly improve the structure and content of this initiative in future years.
    Zeynep Kiziltan was in charge of the whole procedure, which involvd a detailed 
    questionnaire to be filled in by students and organizers 
    of the past editions of the doctoral program.
    Emma Rollon built a very nice web site where the questions were presented 
    and there was also space to give open comments.
    The procedure was successfully received by both students and organizers,
    who entered their opinions. Zeynep then collected 
    and summarized the responses in a 
    report that will be passed to the organizers of future doctoral programs
    and that will also be made available on the ACP web site 
    and possibly presented at CP 2007.
    The ACP EC deeply thanks both Zeynep and Emma for their hard work.
  </div>
  <h4 align="justify">CP 2007 support</h4>
  <div align="justify">As usual, the AC EC supports fully the CP conference, and gives 
    money even before the conference to take care of advance payments.
    This year we gave:  
    13.5K euros as seed money for the expenses of the conference,
    and 10K euros money to support the doctoral program.
  </div>
  <h4 align="justify">ACP EC elections</h4>
  <div align="justify">The current members of the  Executive Committee of the Association for
    Constraint  Programming  are: Frederic Benhamou, Narendra Jussien,
    Javier Larrosa, Jimmy Lee, Pedro Meseguer, Michela Milano, Barry O'Sullivan,
    Jean Charles Regin, Francesca Rossi, Christian Schulte, Mike Trick, and Peter Van Beek.
    According to the rules of the ACP 
    (see <a href="http://www.a4cp.org">www.a4cp.org</a>),
    Javier Larrosa, Pedro Meseguer, Michela Milano, and Peter Van Beek
    will end  their term this summer, while Christian Bessiere and
    one of the conference chairs of CP 2007 (Meinolf Sellmann or Michel Laurent)
    will  enter the  ACP  EC.
    We are now running an election to choose two new members of the ACP EC.
    The call for candidates will be out very soon, with a probable deadline 
    of July 30th to present the candidates. Elections will take place 
    in August-mid September, and the results will be announced at CP 2007.
  </div>
  <h3 align="justify">AFPC news</h3>
  <div align="justify">The third French-speaking Constraint Programming Days (JFPC) were held in Rocquencourt (France) from June 4 to June 6 just before the annual CSCLP ERCIM workshop. During this occasion, the French Association for Constraint Programming 
    (<a href="http://www.afpc-asso.org">AFPC</a>) held its general assembly on June, 4. Elections took place and a new Administrative Council has been elected. The new official of the association are Narendra Jussien, president ; Christine Solnon, vice-president ; Pierre Deransart, general secretary and Bertrand Mazure, secretary.
  </div>
  <p align="justify"> During the 2007-2008 period, the association will organize the fourth JFPC in Nantes (France) with a programme committee defined by Gilles Trombettoni and a French-speaking school on Constraint Programming. Moreover, documents aimed at the general audience will be produced to help the promotion of Constraint Programming. </p>

Narendra Jussien, PhD, HdR. Ecole des Mines de Nantes

 

  <h2 align="justify"><a name="publications" id="publications">Publications</a></h2>
  <h3 align="justify"><a href="http://ai.uwaterloo.ca/~vanbeek/Constraints/constraints.html">Constraint journal:</a></h3>
  <div align="justify"><b>Forthcoming Papers</b>
    <ul>
      <li> <b> Constraint-Based Approach for Annotating Music Scores with Gestural Information</b> <br />
        Daniele P. Radicioni and Vincenzo Lombardo <br />
      </li>
      <li> <b> An Analysis of Arithmetic Constraints on Integer Intervals </b> <br />
        Krzysztof R. Apt and Peter Zoeteweij <br />
      </li>
      <li> <b> Automatic Generation of Redundant Models for
        Permutation Constraint Satisfaction Problems </b> <br />
        Y.C. Law, J.H.M. Lee, and Barbara M. Smith <br />
      </li>
      <li> <b> Maxx: Test Pattern Optimisation with Local Search over an Extended Logic </b> <br />
        Francisco Azevedo <br />
      </li>
    </ul>
    <b>Volume 12, Issue 3 (2007)</b><br />

Special Issue on Local Search Techniques in Constraint Satisfaction

  • Introduction to the Special Issue
    Yehuda Naveh and Andrea Roli
  • Local Search-Based Hybrid Algorithms for Finding Golomb Rulers
    Carlos Cotta, Ivan Dotu, Antonio J. Fernandez, and Pascal Van Hentenryck
  • Generic Incremental Algorithms for Local Search
    Magnus Agren, Pierre Flener, and Justin Pearson
  • Local-Search Extraction of MUSes
    Eric Gregoire, Bertrand Mazure, and Cedric Piette
  • Satisfiability Testing of Boolean Combinations of Pseudo-boolean Constraints using Local-search Techniques
    Lengning Liu and Miroslaw Truszczynski
  • Stochastic Local Search Algorithms for Graph Set T-Colouring and Frequency Assignment
    Marco Chiarandini and Thomas Stutzle

Volume 12, Issue 2 (June 2007)

  • A CSP Search Algorithm with Responsibility Sets and Kernels
    Igor Razgon and Amnon Meisels
  • Design of Financial CDO Squared Transactions Using Constraint Programming
    Pierre Flener, Justin Pearson, Luis G. Reyna, and Olof Sivertsson
  • Cost-Based Filtering for Shorter Path Constraints
    Meinolf Sellmann, Thorsten Gellermann, and Robert Wright
  • The Complexity of Reasoning with Global Constraints
    Christian Bessiere, Emmanuel Hebrard, Brahim Hnich, and Toby Walsh
  </div>
  <h4 align="justify">PhD theses:</h4>

Special issues:

Guest Editors:

  • Alan M Frisch, University of York, UK.
  • Ian Miguel, University of St Andrews, UK.

Important Dates:
Submission of papers: July 31st, 2007
Notification of acceptance: October 1st, 2007
Final versions of accepted papers: Dec 1st, 2007.
Expected publication of the special Issue: 2nd issue of 2008 (Apr 1st).

<p align="justify"> <b>Constraints Journal: <a href="http://www.icsd.aegean.gr/lecturers/konsterg/ConstraintsSpecialIssue.html">Special Issue on Quantified CSPs and QBF</a></b> </p>
<p align="justify"> Guest Editors: </p>

  • Enrico Giunchiglia. Universita di Genova, Italy
  • Kostas Stergiou University of the Aegean, Greece

    Important Dates:
    Submission of papers: September 15th, 2007
    Notification of acceptance: December 15th, 2007
    Final versions of accepted papers: February 15th, 2008

    Swarm Intelligence: Special Issue on Ant Colony Optimization

    Guest Editors:

  • Karl Doerner, Universitaet Wien, Austria
  • Daniel Merkle, Universitaet Leipzig, Germany
  • Thomas Stuetzle, Universite' Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium

    All researchers are invited to submit original work on topics relevant for this special issue of the new journal Swarm Intelligence, which is published by Springer Verlag. Authors should submit their manuscripts to the Swarm Intelligence Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/swrm. Please, select "Special Issue on Ant Colony Optimization" as the article type. When submitting a paper, please send at the same time also an email to Thomas Stuetzle (stuetzle nospam ulb.ac.be) with paper title and author list to inform about the submission.

    Important dates:
    Submission deadline: November 1, 2007
    Tentative publication: summer 2008

  •  

      <h2 align="justify"><a name="events" id="events">Events</a></h2>
      <div align="justify">
        <ul>
            <li> <a href="http://www.lsi.upc.edu/~oliveras/smt07">SMT Workshop '07</a>, 
              5th International Workshop on Satisfiability Modulo
              Theories (affiliated with CAV '2007), 1-2 July, 2007, Berlin, Germany. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://pst.istc.cnr.it/RCRA07/">14th RCRA workshop</a>: 
            Experimental evaluation of algorithms for solving
            problems with combinatorial explosion, 5-6 July, 2007, CNR (National
            Research Council), Rome, Italy. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://atcp07.cs.brown.edu/">ATCP07</a>, 
            (an Affiliated Workshop of ICALP 2007 and LICS 2007) International
            Workshop on Algorithmic Topics in Constraint Programming, July 8, 2007,
            Wroclaw, Poland. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://euro2007.vse.cz/">Timetabling and Rostering</a> stream at EURO XXII (the 22nd European
            Conference on Operational Research), July 8-11, 2007, Prague, Czech
            Republic. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://euro2007.vse.cz/">Educational Timetabling</a> stream at EURO XXII (the 22nd European
            Conference on Operational Research), July 8-11, 2007, Prague, Czech
            Republic. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://ppdp07.ii.uni.wroc.pl">ACM PPDP 2007</a>, 
            9th ACM-SIGPLAN International Symposium on Principles and
            Practice of Declarative Programming, July 14-16, 2007, Wroclaw, Poland. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.miroslav-velev.com/cfv07.html">CFV'07</a>, 
            Fourth International Workshop on Constraints in Formal
            Verification (satellite event to CADE-21), July 16, 2007, Bremen, Germany. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.cadeconference.org/meetings/cade21">CADE21</a>, 
            21st International Conference on Automated Deduction, July 17-20,
            2007 (workshops July 15-16), International University Bremen, Germany. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.cs.st-and.ac.uk/~ianm/SARA2007.html">SARA'07</a>, 
            (organised in cooperation with AAAI and co-located with AAAI'07)
            The Seventh International Symposium on Abstraction, Reformulation and
            Approximation, July 18-21, 2007, Whistler, Canada. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.cs.ucc.ie/~osullb/aaai-config-ws-2007/">AAAI 2007 Workshop on Configuration</a> (affiliated with AAAI'07), July 22-23,
            2007, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.aaai.org/Conferences/AAAI/aaai07.php">AAAI'07</a>, 
            The Twenty-Second National Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
            July 22-26, 2007, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/issac2007/">ISSAC 2007</a>, 
            The International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic
            Computation 2007, July 29 to August 1, 2007, Waterloo, Canada. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://control.ruc.dk/CSLP2007.html">CSLP@Context07</a>, 
            4th International Workshop on Constraints and Language
            Processing (Affiliated with CONTEXT07), 20-21 August 2007, Roskilde,
            Denmark. </li>
          <li> <a href="iridia.ulb.ac.be/sls2007">SLS 2007</a>, 
            Engineering Stochastic Local Search Algorithms --- Designing,
            Implementing and Analyzing Effective Heuristics, 6-8 September, 2007,
            Brussels, Belgium. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~epontell/DC2007">3rd Doctoral Consortium at (ICLP'07)</a> the 23rd International Conference on
            Logic Programming, September 8-13, 2007, Porto, Portugal. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://chr2007.workshops.free.fr">CHR 2007</a>, 
            Fourth Workshop on Constraint Handling Rules (Co-located with
            ICLP 2007), September 8, 2007, Porto, Portugal. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.di.uevora.pt/ciclops07/">CICLOPS 2007</a>, 
            Colloquium on Implementation of Constraint LOgic Programming
            Systems (held in conjunction with ICLP 2007), September 8, 2007, Porto,
            Portugal.  Paper Submission Deadline: July 1st, 2007 (strict). </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.bioinf.uni-freiburg.de/Events/WCB07">WCB07</a>, 
            Workshop on Constraint Based Methods for Bioinformatics (held at
            ICLP07), September 13, 2007, Porto, Portugal. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.dcc.fc.up.pt/iclp07/">ICLP'07</a>, 
            23rd International Conference on Logic Programming, September
            8-13, 2007, Porto, Portugal. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.cp2007.org/">Doctoral Programme of CP 2007</a>, 
            13th International Conference on Principles
            and Practice of Constraint Programming (co-located with ICAPS 2007),
            September 23-27, 2007, Providence, RI, USA.  Email: cp-phd2007 @ aegean.gr. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://teamcore.usc.edu/DCR">DCR 2007</a>, 
            Ninth International Workshop on Distributed Constraint Reasoning
            (Held in conjunction with CP-07), September 23, 2007, Providence, Rhode
            Island, USA.  Submission Deadline: July 12, 2007. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://appsrv.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~isl/cp07Model/">ModRef'07</a>, Sixth International Workshop On Constraint Modelling and
            Reformulation (held at CP 2007), September 23, 2007, Providence, Rhode
            Island, USA.  Submission deadline: Jul 4, 2007. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://research.microsoft.com/constraint-reasoning/Workshops/Autonomous-CP07/default.htm">First Workshop on Autonomous Search</a> (held at CP 2007), September 23, 2007,
            Providence, Rhode Island, USA. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://research.microsoft.com/constraint-reasoning/Workshops/SAT-SMT-CP07/">SAT-SMT-CP07</a>, second workshop on the Integration of SAT/SMT and CP
            techniques (held at CP 2007), September 23, 2007, Providence, Rhode Island,
            USA. Submission deadline: Jul 6, 2007. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.dsic.upv.es/~msalido/workshop-icaps07/index.html">COPLAS 2007</a>, 
            CP/ICAPS 2007 Joint Workshop on Constraint Satisfaction
            Techniques for Planning and Scheduling Problems (held at CP 2007),
            September 23, 2007, Providence, Rhode Island, USA. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.cmi.univ-mrs.fr/~benhamou/symcon07/">SymCon'07</a>, 
            The Seventh International Workshop on Symmetry and Constraint
            Satisfaction Problems (held at CP 2007), September 23, 2007, Providence,
            Rhode Island, USA. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.lina.sciences.univ-nantes.fr/cpga2007/">Second International Workshop on Constraint Programming for Graphical
            Applications</a> (held in Conjunction with CP 2007), September 23rd, 2007,
            Providence, Rhode Island, USA.  Paper Submission deadline: July, 1st, 2007. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.cp2007.org/">CP 2007</a>, 
            13th International Conference on Principles and Practice of
            Constraint Programming (co-located with ICAPS 2007), September 23-27, 2007,
            Providence, RI, USA.  Conference chairs: Meinolf Sellmann and Laurent
            Michel.  Program chair: Christian Bessiere. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.mycosima.com/vldb2007-preferences/">M-PREF 2007</a>, 3rd Multidisciplinary Workshop on ADVANCES IN PREFERENCE
            HANDLING (Held in conjunction with VLDB 2007), September 23 or 24, Vienna,
            Austria. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://andorfer.cs.uni-dortmund.de/~edelkamp/ickeps/">ICKEPS 2007</a>,
            (hosted at ICAPS 2007), The 2nd International Competition on
            Knowledge Engineering for Planning and Scheduling, September 22--26, 2007,
            Providence, Rhode Island, USA. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.cs.umd.ukuter/users/ukuter/icaps07aipl/">AIPL-07</a>, 
            Workshop on ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE PLANNING and LEARNING (in
            conjunction with ICAPS-07), September 22, 2007, Providence, Rhode Island,
            USA. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://ie.technion.ac.il/~dcarmel/icaps07ws">ICAPS'07 Workshop on Heuristics for Domain-independent Planning: Progress,
            Ideas, Limitations, Challenges</a>, September 22nd, 2007, Providence, Rhode
            Island, USA. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www2.parc.com/isl/members/minhdo/icaps07_ws/">ICAPS-07 Workshop on International Planning Competition: Past, Present and
            Future</a>, September 23, 2007, Providence, Rhode Island, USA. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://pst.istc.cnr.it/ssc-at-icaps-07/">SSC@ICAPS07</a>, International Workshop on Scheduling a Scheduling Competition
            (held in conjunction with ICAPS 2007), Sept. 22nd, 2007, Providence, Rhode
            Island, USA. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.plg.inf.uc3m.es/icaps-pg2007/">ICAPS PG 2007</a>, 
            The ICAPS 2007 Workshop on Planning in Games (held at ICAPS
            2007), September, 23, 2007, Providence, Rhode Island, USA. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.ai.sri.com/~nysmith/organizing/icaps07-workshop/">ICAPS-07 Workshop on Moving Planning and Scheduling Systems into the Real
            World</a> (held in conjunction with ICAPS 2007), 23 September 2007, Providence,
            Rhode Island, U.S.A. </li>
          <li> <a href=" http://icaps07.icaps-conference.org">ICAPS 2007</a>, 
            The International Conference on Automated Planning and
            Scheduling (Co-located with CP 2007), September 22--26, 2007, Providence,
            Rhode Island, USA. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.informatik.uni-kiel.de/~mh/wlp2007">WLP 2007</a>, 
            21st Workshop on (Constraint) Logic Programming (Co-located with
            INAP 2007), October 4-6, 2007, Wuerzburg, Germany. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www1.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de/databases/INAP/2007/">INAP 2007</a>, International Conference on Applications of Declarative
            Programming and Knowledge Management, October 4-6, 2007, University of
            Wuerzburg, Germany.  Deadline for Submission: July 1, 2007. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.lpar.net/2007/">LPAR 2007</a>, 
            The 14th International Conference on Logic for Programming
            Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning, 15th-19th October 2007, Yerevan,
            Armenia. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.nordicmps.org">2nd Nordic Optimization Symposium</a>, 
            October 18-20, 2007, Oslo, Norway. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://4c.ucc.ie/KCCP07">KCCP-07</a>, 
            K-CAP 2007 WORKSHOP: Knowledge Capture and Constraint Programming
            (held in conjunction with KCAP 2007), October 28, 2007, Whistler, BC,
            Canada.  Paper submission deadline: July 15, 2007. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://ictai07.ceid.upatras.gr">ICTAI-2007</a>, The 19th IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE on TOOLS with ARTIFICIAL
            INTELLIGENCE, October 29-31, 2007, Patras, Greece. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.dsic.upv.es/~msalido/workshop-caepia07/index_en.html">CAEPIA 2007</a>, 
            Workshop on Planning, Scheduling and Constraint Satisfaction,
            November, 12-13, 2007, Salamanca, Spain.  Paper submission deadline: July
            15, 2007. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.cit.gu.edu.au/conferences/austai/">AI 2007</a>, Twentieth Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence,
            2nd-6th December 2007, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.  Deadline for
            paper submissions: 13th July 2007. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://epia2007.appia.pt/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task=view&amp;id=53&amp;Itemid=73">STCS 2007</a>, 
            Workshop on Search Techniques for Constraint Satisfaction (held
            at EPIA 2007), 3-7 December, 2007, Guimaraes, Portugal. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://epia2007.appia.pt">EPIA 2007</a>, 
            13th Portuguese Conference on Artificial Intelligence, December
            3-7, 2007, Guimaraes, Portugal. </li>
          <li> <a href="http://www.ist.unomaha.edu/padl2008/">PADL'08</a>, 
            Tenth International Symposium on Practical Aspects of Declarative
            Languages 2008 (Co-located with ACM POPL'08), January 7-8, 2008, San
            Francisco, USA.  Paper submission deadline: August 24, 2007.
        </UL>
        </li>
        </ul>
      </div>
      <p align="justify">&nbsp;</p>
      <h2 align="justify"><a name="career" id="career">Career news</a></h2>
      <div align="justify">
        <ul>
          <li> </li>
        </UL>
      </div>
      <ul><li><h4 align="justify">PhD studentship Available at 4C</h4>
          <p align="justify"> Position:          PhD studentship; fully funded for three years. <br />
            Location:          Constraint Computation Centre,  University College
            Cork, Ireland <br />
            Area:              Advanced Electronic Auctions for B2B Commerce, 
            Optimisation <br />
            Contact:           Barry O'Sullivan - <a href="mailto:b.osullivan@cs.ucc.ie">b.osullivan@cs.ucc.ie</a> </p>
          <p align="justify"> Research Topic: This project involves the study of combinatorial auctions
            in which multiple distinguishable items are sold. In contrast to standard
            single unit auctions, in a combinatorial auctions bidders bid on
            preferred   combinations of items, thus enabling the expression of
            complementarities. For example, a take-off slot in Cork airport and a
            landing slot in Heathrow 1 hour apart complement each other because this
            is the precise flight time between the two cities and their combined
            value is much greater than that of two slots 90 minutes apart. Bidders
            can describe their preferences in a more expressive manner so that they
            can be awarded combinations of items that result in greater economic
            efficiency over single-item auctions. </p>
          <p align="justify"> Combinatorial auctions present difficulties in terms of preference
            elicitation, how the bidder describes their preferences concisely, and
            winner determination. The bid-taker must choose the combination of bids
            that maximises revenue and this requires a sophisticated algorithmic
            solution, given that potentially thousands of bids may be submitted. </p>
          <p align="justify"> This project aims to develop a combinatorial auction solution for the
            multi-billion euro procurement sector so that suppliers can inform
            purchasers of those combinations of items that cause cost reductions for
            suppliers, thus enabling a win-win situation for bidders and the
            bid-taker. </p>
          <h4 align="justify">Research manager position at PARC</h4>
          <div align="justify">We have an open position for manager of the Embedded Reasoning group at
            PARC. Please find the job ad <a href="http://www.parc.com/contact/employment/position.php?id=110">here</a>.   Feel free to forward this message.
            Markus Fromherz.
          </div>
          <h4 align="justify">President of Ireland Young Researcher Award (PIYRA) 2008</h4>
          <div align="justify">The President of Ireland Young Researcher Award (PIYRA) is Science
            Foundation Ireland's most   prestigious award for young researchers from
            around the world to carry out their research in third level institutions
            in Ireland. The award recognizes outstanding engineers and scientists
            who, early in their careers, have already demonstrated or shown
            exceptional potential for leadership at the frontiers of knowledge.
            Awardees will be selected on the basis of exceptional accomplishments in
            engineering and  science disciplines that underpin ICT and BIO, and
            creative research plans that are built on   work that has attracted
            international attention.
          </div>
          <p align="justify"> SFI will invite submission of up to eight PIYRA  nominations from each of
            the Research Bodies in  Ireland. SFI expects a diverse group of nominees,
            including Irish and foreign nationals, currently based anywhere in the
            world, who will conduct their research in Ireland.
            Through this Award, SFI will identify the most   promising of a new
            generation of top-tier cutting edge researchers in fields that are
            critical to Ireland's economic and social prosperity. </p>
          <p align="justify"> Summary of Award: <br />
            Duration: 5 years. <br />
            Amount: Up to 1 million Euros direct costs. <br />
            Eligibility Criteria: Applicants for the PIYRA
            2008 competition must meet all of the following requirements. </p>
        </li>
        <li>
          <div align="justify"> Awarded PhD or equivalent no earlier than October 1st 2001. </div>
        </li>
        <li>
          <div align="justify"> Have not previously received an SFI award funded by the ICT or BIO
            Directorates.  Researchers currently holding a Basic Research Grant or
            holding/applying for a Research Frontiers Programme Grant are eligible
            to apply.
          </div>
        </UL>
            <p align="justify"> Deadline:  Wednesday, 17th of October at 5pm <br />
              Decision Date:  Offers will be made to successful candidates in March
              2008. <br />
              Start Date: Successful applicants need to commence their grant before
              December 1st, 2008. <br />
              Limit on Number of Proposals: The prospective host institution (an Irish
              Research Body such as a University or Institute of Technology) may submit
              a maximum of eight proposals for this call. <br />
              Candidate Nominations: A potential candidate for the Award can contact
              any Irish Research Body and request consideration by the institution to
              be   one of their nominees. It is up to the Research  Body to determine
              how it will select exceptional candidates. Each candidate can only be
              nominated by one Research Body. <br />
              Estimated Number of Awards: up to 10 awards </p>
          <p align="justify"> Full details on the proposal and submission requirements and contact
            details for Research Bodies in Ireland are found in the proposal call: <br />
            Call for Proposals
            <a href="http://www.sfi.ie/content/../uploads/documents/upload/PIYRA_2008_Programme_Call.pdf">http://www.sfi.ie/content/../uploads/documents/upload/PIYRA_2008_Program...</a> <br />
            FAQs
            <a href="http://www.sfi.ie/content/../uploads/documents/upload/PIYRA_2008_FAQs.pdf">http://www.sfi.ie/content/../uploads/documents/upload/PIYRA_2008_FAQs.pdf</a> </p>
          <p align="justify"> For questions and queries on this Programme please contact the relevant
            Research Body  directly or alternatively Dr Ruth Freeman, SFI Biosciences
            and Bioengineering Directorate, by email only at: piyra-at-sfi.ie </p>
          <h4 align="justify"> RESEARCH POSITION: Implementation of the Bach coordination language in
            MANETs and application to image analysis</h4>
          <div align="justify">The CoordiNam coordination group of the Institute of Informatics of the
          University of Namur has an opening for a researcher to work on a FSR
          project aiming at implementing the Bach coordination language in mobile
          ad hoc networks (MANETs) and to establish its practicability through its
          application to distributed image analysis techniques.  The appointment
          is funded by the University of Namur for one year and is, in principle,
          for a junior researcher. It can however be transformed in a postdoc
          position in some cases. The net salary is approximatively 1,500.00
          EUR/month for a single junior applicant and 1,800.00 EUR/month for a
          single postdoc applicant.
          </div>
          <p align="justify"> To be considered, candidates must have a MSc degree in Computer Science
            or in Mathematics or equivalent. They should be comfortable with C and
            Java programming as well as with the Linux operating system.
            Publications or experiences in coordination languages, mobile computing,
            constraint satisfaction or image processing are a plus.  For further
            information, please visit the project web site
            <a href="http://www.info.fundp.ac.be/~jmj/Fsr">http://www.info.fundp.ac.be/~jmj/Fsr</a>  or contact  Professor Jean-Marie
            Jacquet (<a href="mailto:jmj@info.fundp.ac.be">jmj@info.fundp.ac.be</a>). </p>
          <p align="justify"> Application forms are delivered by the &quot;Direction du Personnel des
            Facultses of two academic references, should be sent to the Rector, same
            postal address, with copy to Professor Jean-Marie Jacquet (Institute of
            Informatics, University of Namur, rue Grandgagnage 21, B-5000 Namur,
            Belgium, email: <a href="mailto:jmj@info.fundp.ac.be">jmj@info.fundp.ac.be</a>) by August 15th 2007. </p>
          <p align="justify"> The University is located in Namur, a 100,000-inhabitant town located 50
            km south from Brussels in Belgium (European Union). Established in 1831,
            it has about 4,800 students. Teaching and research are conducted at the
            highest level in the fields of natural sciences, economic and social
            sciences, law, humanities, medicine and computer science. The University
            annual budget is in excess of 35 million euros. </p>
          <p align="justify"> The Institute of Informatics is the oldest and largest CS faculty in the
            French Community of Belgium. Its staff comprises 16 fulltime professors
            and about 60 researchers.  It has graduated more than 1,300 M.Sc. and
            Ph.D. students since 1973. </p>
          <h4 align="justify">2 PhD and 2 Post-doc positions in Orsay, France</h4>
          <div align="justify">2 PhD and 2 Post-doc positions are open in the area of automatic tuning
          of search and optimization methods in Orsay, France.
          </div>
          <p align="justify"> Optimization and search methods for combinatorial or mixed
            discrete-continuous problems are reaching a mature state that allows
            users to tackle real-world problems in an efficient way. However, both
            exact methods (e.g. Constraint Programming) and heuristic and
            meta-heuristic approaches (e.g. Evolutionary Algorithms) have to face the
            critical issue of parameter tuning, that remains problem- and even
            instance-dependent, and requires past experience of the algorithm being
            used. </p>
          <p align="justify"> In this context, a project is being launched at the INRIA-Microsoft joint
            lab in Orsay, co-headed by Youssef Hamadi (Microsoft Research, Cambridge,
            UK) and Marc Schoenauer (INRIA Futurs, Orsay, France).  Its goal is to
            set up automatic tuning methods for search algorithms in e-science,
            allowing scientists who have little knowledge of the search technique
            itself to nevertheless solve their optimization problem without the need
            for some &quot;optimization engineer&quot;. </p>
          <p align="justify"> Relying on Machine Learning and statistical techniques, the project will
            address both off-line and on-line tuning issues, at the problem level as
            well as at the instance level. The target algorithms will be Constraint
            Programming, building on the expertise of the Constraint Reasoning Group
            at MSR, and meta-heuristics, with a particular emphasis on Evolutionary
            Algorithms, one research area of the TAO project-team at INRIA Futurs. </p>
          <p align="justify"> Two PhD and two post-doc positions are open (to start on October 1.).
            The location for all positions is the new INRIA-Microsoft Joint lab in
            Orsay, France.  The PhDs will be supervised by Youssef Hamadi (MSR), Marc
            Schoenauer (INRIA), and other TAO researchers. Needless to say, all the
            results of this project will be published and made available as Open
            Source. </p>
          <p align="justify"> <b>Profile for PhD students</b> </p>
          <p align="justify"> Both PhD students should have a Master in Computer Science or Applied
            Maths, or some equivalent diploma, with a strong background on Statistics
            and Machine Learning, and a solid programming experience.  Some knowledge
            of optimization methods, either complete combinatorial methods or
            heuristic methods, is also mandatory. One position will be focused on
            Constraint Programming techniques, and the other one on Evolutionary
            Algorithms, but both should work together on the statistical learning
            techniques that are common to both problems when it comes to parameter
            tuning. Note that other related profiles will also be considered. </p>
          <p align="justify"> Competencies: Constraint Programming, Meta-heuristics, Machine Learning. <br />
            Technical skills: C, C++, C#, Matlab. <br />
            Additional competencies: French and English, Knowledge in
            Biology/Bioinformatics/e-Sciences, Development experience with MS
            Visual Studio. <br />
            Salary:
            Standard French public PhD scholarship package. </p>
          <p align="justify"> <b>Profile for Post-doc students</b> </p>
          <p align="justify"> Post-doc candidates must have completed their PhD at the start of the
            project. The profile of the first Post-doc position is similar to that of
            the PhD students above. The other Post-doc should have a strong
            experience in bio-informatics, related to search or Machine Learning.
            She will work on the applications of the project, ensuring the practical
            relevance of the fundamental findings of the project. </p>
          <p align="justify"> Competencies: Constraint Programming, Meta-heuristics, Machine Learning. <br />
            Technical skills: C, C++, C#, Matlab. <br />
            Additional competencies: French and English, Knowledge in 
            Biology/Bioinformatics/e-Sciences, Development experience with MS
            Visual Studio. <br />
            Salary:
            Standard French public Post-doc package. </p>
          <p align="justify"> Contact:
            Send full CV and at least two letters of reference to 'youssefh at
            microsoft dot com' and 'Marc dot Schoenauer at inria dot fr'. </p>
        </li>
      </ul>