Volume 3, Number 0, January 2007

Constraint Programming News

      <h3 style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span class="GramE"><span lang="EN-US">volume</span></span><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US">3</span><span lang="EN-US">, number </span><span lang="EN-US">0</span><span lang="EN-US">, </span><span lang="EN-US">January,</span><span lang="EN-US"> 200</span><span lang="EN-US">7</span></h3>

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.

* Association for Constraint Programming (ACP)

          ACP EC news: October 1st to December 31th, 2006

           -----------------------------------------------

This is a short summary of the activities of the ACP EC during the months October-December 2006.

* Appointment for all the EC charges.

All the charges of the ACP (president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer and conference coordinator) were reconsidered. After an internal election process, with the following candidates:

-President: Francesca Rossi, Jean-Charles Régin

-Vice-president: Peter van Beek, Frédéric Benhamou

-Secretary: Pedro Meseguer

-Treasurer: Christian Bessiere

-Conference coordinator: Barry O'Sullivan

the following people were elected:

-President: Francesca Rossi

-Vice-president: Peter van Beek

-Secretary: Pedro Meseguer

-Treasurer: Christian Bessiere

-Conference coordinator: Barry O'Sullivan

These charges will be held for one year (until CP 2007).

* Discussion on possible changes in the ACP rules.

The EC is considering the possibility to improve some of the ACP rules. To do this, a subcommittee of the EC, chaired by Michael Trick, is analyzing many other associations and is discussing possible improvements of the current set of ACP rules. The whole ACP EC will then decide on the changes, which will apply within a year.

* Feedback on Doctoral Program.

A procedure  has been activated to get feedback from students that have participated in the Doctoral Program of previous conferences. This information will be used to improve the structure of the DP in future CP conferences.

* Decision for 2007 CP summer school.

The call for bids for the CP 2007 summer school was sent out soon after CP 2006, and it has been closed on December 20. The ACP EC decided to accept the bid prepared by Javier Larrosa and Pedro Meseguer, who will organize the 2007 CP Summer School in Spain (in some place by the coast near Barcelona) in June 2007. It will be a general school, with lectures on various aspects of CP. More details will be posted soon.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Please visit the website  of the Association, http://www.a4cp.org/. It explains the purpose  of the ACP and its rules,  and it provides links to the ACP EC elections, the Constraints Journal,  the CP conferences, the CP summer school, the  Yahoo! discussion group on constraints, and other activities of the ACP.

* We are saddened to pass on news that Marco Cadoli (http://www.dis.uniroma1.it/~cadoli ) has passed away on November 21, 2006, after a long battle with cancer. He leaves his beloved wife Laura and two small sons Andrea and Riccardo. Marco made many contributions to research in constraints, satisfiability, knowledge representation and databases. An international symposium in Rome is being planned in his honour, just before the next Italian AI Conference.

* 4C News

We are pleased to announce that Alan Holland and Roberto Rossi, both of the Cork Constraint Computation Centre, are two of the four short-listed candidates for the Irish Software Association Student Medal for Commercially Viable Software 2006.

"The Irish Software Association (ISA) Student of the Year medal will be made to the post graduate student, who in the opinion of the judges has developed the most innovative and commercially viable software product. This also provides an opportunity to foster closer links between the software industry and Irish 3rd level institutions.

This student medal will be presented at the ISA Annual Software Industry Awards ceremony to be held in the Burlington Hotel, Dublin 4on the 10th November 2006."

http://www.software.ie/sectors/isa/isadoclib3.nsf/vLookupHTML/Information_ISA_Awards_Student_Medal?OpenDocument

Alan Holland has received support from Enterprise Ireland and Science Foundation Ireland . Roberto Rossi has received support from Science Foundation Ireland through the Centre for Telecommunications Value-Chain Research.

* Call for Organization

6th International Planning Competition (alongside ICAPS 2008)

Sydney, Australiahttp://www.cis.strath.ac.uk/~derek/ipccfb.html

* European Commission Framework 6 Programme

Integrated Infrastructures Initiatives

Symbolic Computation in Europe (SCIEnce)

TRANSNATIONAL ACCESS PROGRAMME

Research Institute for Symbolic Computation (RISC)

Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Austria

RISC-Linz, a research institute at the Johannes Kepler University,  Austria, offers opportunities to researchers to obtain access to its infrastructure and facilities. Access is free of charge and is provided through the project SCIEnce within the 6th Framework Programme of the European Commission.

What we offer

=============

Free access to the infrastructure, facilities, and expertise of a world-leading center in symbolic computation.

Scientific, technical, administrative, and logistic support, including travel and living expenses.

Who can benefit

===============

Students and Researchers from various fields of sciences who use or would like to use symbolic computation in their work.

For more information and the application procedure please visit the program web page:

http://www.risc.uni-linz.ac.at/projects/science/access/

* European Commission Framework 6 Programme

Integrated Infrastructures Initiatives

Symbolic Computation in Europe (SCIEnce)

FIRST TRAINING SCHOOL IN SYMBOLIC COMPUTATION

February 5-18, 2007

RISC, Castle of Hagenberg, Austria

http://www.risc.uni-linz.ac.at/projects/science/school

* ICAPS Best Dissertation Award

The ICAPS Executive Council has established a new

            ICAPS Best Dissertation Award

This award honors an outstanding Ph.D. dissertation in any area of automated planning and scheduling. It will be given during ICAPS conferences.

PhD dissertations that were completed and filed in 2005 or 2006 may be considered for the next ICAPS07 award.

The recipient of the 2007 award will receive a certificate, 500 US$ and a complementary registration to the ICAPS07 conference.

The award committee is requesting nominations of candidate PhDs.

The nomination material should include the following :

-a CV of the candidate with a complete list of publications,

-a copy of the dissertation,

-a nomination letter by the PhD advisor,

-two additional recommendation letters, or a copy of the request for such letters.

Nominations should be submitted in electronic form (preferably as a single pdf file or the url of such a file) to the ICAPS Award Committee chair: Malik.Ghallab@laas.fr

Submission deadline : January 31st 2007.

The decision will be notified by June 1st, 2007

* Post your articles in CoRR!

  by Krzysztof R. Apt

By means of this short note I would like to call your attention/remind you of the e-Print archive, http://arXiv.org/ that started in 1991 as Los Alamos National Laboratory e-Print archive (LANL) by the physicist Paul Ginsparg. At present ArXiv contains more than 392,000 e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science and Quantitative Biology. It is a fully automated electronic archive and distribution server for research papers.

* CP 2007:

 *Location: Providence, RI, USA

 *Dates: fall 2007.

 *Conference chairs: Meinolf Sellmann and Laurent Michel

 *Program chair: Christian Bessiere

 *Co-located with ICAPS 2007 (International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling)

CONSTRAINTS Upcoming and Planned Special Issues

The Constraints Journal has two special issues which currently have open calls for papers:

Special Issue on Abstraction and Automation in Constraint Modelling Guest editors: Alan Frisch, Ian Miguel Call for Papers: http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~ianm/ModellingSpecialIssue.html

Special Issue on Constraint-Based Methods for Bioinformatics Guest editor: Agostino Dovier Call for Papers: http://www.dimi.uniud.it/dovier/WCBSI/

CONSTRAINTS Journal Accepted Papers

The contents of upcoming issues are listed below. Links to the authors' final versions of these papers (no subscription required) and to the final published versions (subscription required) can be found here: http://ai.uwaterloo.ca/~vanbeek/Constraints/constraints.html

Volume 12, Issue 2

A CSP Search Algorithm with Responsibility Sets and Kernels

I. Razgon and A. Meisels

Design of Financial CDO Squared Transactions Using Constraint Programming

P. Flener, J. Pearson, L. G. Reyna, and O. Sivertsson

Cost-Based Filtering for Shorter Path Constraints

M.Sellmann, T. Gellermann, and R. Wright

The Complexity of Reasoning with Global Constraints

C. Bessiere, E. Hebrard, B. Hnich, and T. Walsh

Volume 12, Issue 3 (tentative)

Special Issue on Local Search

Local Search-Based Hybrid Algorithms for Finding Golomb Rulers

C. Cotta, I. Dotu, A. J. Fernandez, P. Van Hentenryck

Generic Incremental Algorithms for Local Search

M. Agren, P. Flener, J. Pearson

Local-Search Extraction of MUSes

É. Grégoire, B. Mazure, C. Piette

Satisfiability Testing of Boolean Combinations of Pseudo-boolean

Constraints using Local-search Techniques

Lengning Liu, Miroslaw Truszczy´nski

Stochastic Local Search Algorithms for Graph Set T-Colouring and

Frequency Assignment

Marco Chiarandini Thomas Stutzle

Publications

Books

-SAT 2005: satisfiability in the year 2005 General Computer Science series, Springer 2006. Enrico Giunchiglia and Toby Walsh (editors) (This volume collects together papers that appear in "Journal of Automated Reasoning", Volume 35, Numbers 1-3)

-Constraint Logic Programming Using Eclipse, K. R. Apt and M. G. Wallace, Cambridge University Press, Hardback (ISBN-13: 9780521866286 | ISBN-10: 0521866286). http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521866286

-Handbook of Constraint Programming. Francesca Rossi, Peter van Beek, and Toby Walsh (Editors). Foundations of Artificial Intelligence series. Elsevier 2006. ISBN 0-444-52726-5, 978 pages

Part I : Foundations

Chapter 1. Introduction (Francesca Rossi, Peter van Beek, Toby Walsh)

Chapter 2. Constraint Satisfaction: An Emerging Paradigm (Eugene C. Freuder, Alan K. Mackworth)

Chapter 3. Constraint Propagation (Christian Bessiere)

Chapter 4. Backtracking Search Algorithms (Peter van Beek)

Chapter 5. Local Search Methods (Holger H. Hoos, Edward Tsang)

Chapter 6. Global Constraints (Willem-Jan van Hoeve, Irit Katriel)

Chapter 7. Tractable Structures for CSPs (Rina Dechter)

Chapter 8. The Complexity of Constraint Languages (David Cohen, Peter Jeavons)

Chapter 9. Soft Constraints (Pedro Meseguer, Francesca Rossi, Thomas Schiex)

Chapter 10. Symmetry in Constraint Programming (Ian P. Gent, Karen E. Petrie, Jean-Francois Puget)

Chapter 11. Modelling (Barbara M. Smith)

Part II : Extensions, Languages, and Applications

Chapter 12. Constraint Logic Programming (Kim Marriott, Peter J. Stuckey, Mark Wallace)

Chapter 13. Constraints in Procedural and Concurrent Languages ( Thom Fruehwirth, Laurent Michel, Christian Schulte)

Chapter 14. Finite Domain Constraint Programming Systems (Christian Schulte, Mats Carlsson)

Chapter 15. Operations Research Methods in Constraint Programming (John Hooker)

Chapter 16. Continuous and Interval Constraints( Frederic Benhamou, Laurent Granvilliers)

Chapter 17. Constraints over Structured Domains ( Carmen Gervet)

Chapter 18. Randomness and Structure (Carla Gomes, Toby Walsh)

Chapter 19. Temporal CSPs (Manolis Koubarakis)

Chapter 20. Distributed Constraint Programming (Boi Faltings)

Chapter 21. Uncertainty and Change (Kenneth N. Brown, Ian Miguel)

Chapter 22. Constraint-Based Scheduling and Planning (Philippe Baptiste, Philippe Laborie, Claude Le Pape, Wim Nuijten)

Chapter 23. Vehicle Routing (Philip Kilby, Paul Shaw)

Chapter 24. Configuration (Ulrich Junker)

Chapter 25. Constraint Applications in Networks (Helmut Simonis)

Chapter 26. Bioinformatics and Constraints (Rolf Backofen, David Gilbert)

-Constraint Theory, George Friedman, ISBN: 0387234187, Springer-Verlag GmbH, 2005

-Constraint-Based Verification, Jun Yuan, Carl Pixley, Adnan Aziz, Springer; 1 edition (January 13, 2006), ISBN: 0387259473

-Constraint Reasoning for Differential Models, Volume 126 Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications, J. Cruz, July 2005, 244 pp., ISBN: 1-58603-532-0

-Constraint-Based Local Search by Pascal VanHentenryck and Laurent Michel, The MIT Press (August 1, 2005) , ISBN: 0262220776

-Décompositions combinatoires et applications industrielles by BENOIST Thierry. Collection programmation par contraintes, Hermes, 2-7462-1569-1. To appear: 03- 2007. In french.

-Précis de sudoku by JUSSIEN Narendra. Hermes, 2-7462-1559-4, 10-2006, 190p. In french.

-Logique(s), langages formels et complexité pour l'informatique, by JUSSIEN Narendra, Collection informatique, Hermes, 2-7462-1395-8, 09-2006, 312p. In French.

-A to Z of sudoku by Narendra Jussien, ISTE (Hermes/Lavoisier), ISBN 9781847040008. To appear 01-2007.

-Trends in Constraint Programming, BENHAMOU Frédéric, JUSSIEN Narendra, O'SULLIVAN Barry. ISTE (Hermes/Lavoisier). To appear

  04-2007

Thesis

* Arnaud Lallouet has defended his Habilitation on Dec 13, 2006.

Title : Automatic Solver Construction, Constraint Learning and Quantified Constraint

Solving (http://www.univ-orleans.fr/lifo/Members/lallouet/ )

Comitee:

- M. Christian Bessière        Chargé de Recherche, CNRS                Reporter

- M. Jimmy Ho-Man Lee        Professeur, CUHK, Hong-Kong        Reporter

- M. Eric Monfroy                Professeur, Université de Nantes        Reporter

- M. Frédéric Benhamou        Professeur, Université de Nantes        Examiner

- M. François Fages                Directeur de Recherche, INRIA        Examiner

- Mme Christel Vrain                Professeur, Université d?Orléans        Examiner

Summary : Constraint Programming is a powerful tool for solving problems in AI and for Decision Support Systems.  Two aspects are important: the modelling language has to be expressive and the solver efficient.

Our contributions tackle these two problems.  We propose automatic solver construction techniques based on Machine Learning for an arbitrary constraint defined in extension. These techniques yield different filtering levels.  When a concept known only by a subset of positive and negative examples has to be used as a constraint in a problem, we propose a technique to learn the constraint and derive from this step a propagator.

Then, we have studied the problem of quantified constraints which is able to model uncertainty or competition against an opponent.  We have proposed and built a solver for an extended language which is able to express naturally quantified problems and at the same time to solve them faster.

* Brice Pajot, Phd Thesis : Modèles et architectures pour la résolution coopérative par

solveurs de contraintes (in french) http://login.irin.sciences.univ-nantes.fr/thesis-private

Abstract :

The research area of this thesis is related to (cooperative) constraint solving –(C)CS. Classical CS methods yield generally poor performances on large scale problems. New methods are oriented towards synergetic behaviours. The literature brings numerous examples of successes associated to the combination (in the large sense) of CS techniques. Solver cooperation - SC- is related to these problematics. While ad-hoc combination methods are widespread, works on frameworks which enhance the definition and reuse of these assemblies are clearly more sporadic. SC is at the crossway of various problematics including software components or coordination; moreover, it is also close to fields like web services and distributed computing tools, which enhance the modularity, the genericity and the efficiency of related frameworks. The work of this thesis first tries to clarify the different approaches while extracting the shared concepts. We then try to integrate them in an homogeneous framework, where on the one hand, we try to promote  reusability, while on the other, common interactions are reproducable. Besides this conceptual work at the so-called models level, we will present various propositions related to architecture and domain specific language implementations. The latter mainly benefit from the experience acquired in the European project coconut, which aimed at improving the performances of the best known solving methods for continuous guaranteed global optimisation problems using CCS.

 
 

* Tony Lambert, PhD Thesis : Hybridation de méthodes complètes et incomplètes pour la résolution de CSP (in french) http://www.info.univ-angers.fr/pub/lambert/these_Tony_Lambert.pdf

 
Hybridization of complet and incomplete methods to solve CSP
Abstract:

Hybridization of incomplete and constraint programming techniques for solving Constraint Satisfaction Problems is generally restricted to some kind of master-slave combinations for specifc classes of problems. In this PhD thesis, we are concerned with the design of a hybrid resolution framework based on K.R. Apt's chaotic iterations. In this framework, basic resolution processes are abstracted by functions over an ordered structure. This allows us to consider the different resolution agents at a same level and to study more precisely various strategies for hybridization of local

search, genetic algorithms and constraint propagation. Hybrid resolution can be achieved as the computation of a fixed point of some specific reduction functions. Our framework opens up new and finer possibilities for hybridization/combination strategies. Our prototype implementation gave experimental results showing the interest of the model to design such hybridizations.

Keywords : CSP, local search, genetic algorithms, constraint propagation, hybrid resolution

Special issue

* CONSTRAINTS Journal

  Special Issue on Constraint based methods for Bioinformatics

Guest Editors:

Alessandro Dal Palu', Parma University, Italy .

Email: alessandro.dalpalu AT unipr.it

Agostino Dovier, Udine University, Italy .

Email: dovier AT dimi.uniud.it

Sebastian Will, Freiburg University, Germany .

Email: will AT informatik.uni-freiburg.de

Important Dates

Abstract submission:            January 10th, 2007

Submission Deadline:            January 31th, 2007

Notification of acceptance:     April   30th, 2007

Final versions of accepted papers: June 30th, 2007

See: http://www.dimi.uniud.it/dovier/WCBSI/

* CONSTRAINTS Journal

  Special Issue on Abstraction and Automation in Constraint Modelling

Guest Editors

+ Alan M Frisch, University of York, UK .

+ Ian Miguel, University of St Andrews, UK .

Expression of interest: May 1st, 2007

Submission of papers: July 1st, 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).

http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~ianm/ModellingSpecialIssue.html

* Journal on Satisfiability, Boolean Modeling and Computation (JSAT)

  Special Issue on Application of constraints to formal verification (CFV)

Guest Editors: Miroslav Velev and Joao Marques-Silva

Deadline for paper submission: January 10, 2007

Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

-application of constraint solvers to hardware verification;

-application of constraint solvers to software verification;

-dedicated solvers for formal verification problems;

-tuning SAT for formal verification and testing;

-challenging formal verification problems.

The submissions have to be in the JSAT format: http://www.isa.ewi.tudelft.nl/Jsat/ and have to be e-mailed to: mvelev@gmail.com

If possible, please confirm your intent to submit a paper.

* Constraint Programming Letters Journal Special Issue on Arc Consistency Algorithms, Analysis, and Applications

Submissions and questions  regarding  this special  issue of the Constraint Letters Journal may be sent electronically to Marc van Dongen  (dongen@cs.ucc.ie)  or by regular  mail to the  following address:

Marc van Dongen

Computer Science Department

University College Cork

Western Road

Cork

Ireland

Paper submission deadline: March 31, 2007

Acceptance notification: June 30, 2007

Software

-The "ozziKs" QCSP Solver

When a quantified CSP (QCSP) is claimed to be TRUE by some solver, how can we verify that such answer is correct?

In a standard CSP, it is just a matter of checking (in polynomial time) the values assigned to the variables by the solver  against each constraint in the CSP.

In the QCSP framework things are more complex: As a certificate we need a strategy. A strategy can be seen as a set of functions - one for each existentially quantified variable - yielding admissible values for existential variables as a function of some relevant subset of the universally quantified ones.

One such strategy is what we can actually check against the set of constraints to certify its validity.

Also, a strategy is a piece of information which is itself interesting (provided a "real-world" problem has been encoded into the underlying QCSP) as it provides an explicit scenario in which the validity of the quantified set of constraints is revealed.

For the case of quantified boolean constraints (QBFs), which we address here, strategies are also called simply certificates. 

The software "ozziKs", whose public availability we publicise here, is the implementation of an algorithm that: builds a certificate of satisfiability C(F) - a.k.a. strategy or policy or quantified model - for any given true Quantified Boolean Formula F for which a suited inference log is available (at present, only the QBF solver sKizzo produces a suited log); verifies C(F) against F, thus certifying in a solver-independent way the validity of F; evaluates user-provided expressions of various kinds over C(F); writes to file in different formats C(F) and/or the result of the evaluation of the above mentioned expressions.

A detailed user manual is available here. Linux, OS-X, and cygwin versions are available for download at http://sKizzo.info.

Marco Benedetti, PhD

Research Associate

 

Events

DCR-2007, Eighth International Workshop on Distributed Constraint Reasoning (In Conjunction with IJCAI'07).  January 8th, 2007, Hyderabad, India. http://liawww.epfl.ch/Events/IJCAI07_DCR/

IJCAI-07, Twentieth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. January 6-12, 2007, Hyderabad, India . http://www.ijcai-07.org

PADL'07, Ninth International Symposium on Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages 2007 (Co-located with ACM POPL'07).  January 14-15, 2007, Nice, France .  http://www.informatik.uni-kiel.de/~mh/padl07

International Symmetry Conference.  14th to the 17th of January, 2007, Thistle Hotel, Edinburgh, UK .  http://isc.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/

VMCAI'07, The Eighth International Conference on Verification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation.  January 14-16, 2007, Nice, France . http://research.microsoft.com/vmcai07

SAC'07, 22nd Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (Track on Constraint Solving and Programming).  March 11-15, 2007, Seoul, Korea . http://www.sci.unich.it/~bista/organizing/constraint-sac2007/

DALT 2007, 5th International Workshop on Declarative Agent Languages and Technologies (held in conjunction with AAMAS 2007), 14 or 15 May 2007, Hawaii Convention Center, Hawaii, USA . Paper submission deadline: 5 February 2007.  http://www.di.unito.it/~baldoni/DALT-2007/

CPAIOR 2007, The Fourth International Conference on Integration of AI and OR Techniques in Constraint Programming for Combinatorial Optimization Problems, May 23-26, 2007, Brussels, Belgium.   Paper submission deadline: January 26, 2007.  www.cs.brown.edu/sites/cpaior07

SAT'07, 10th International Conference on Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing, May 28 - 31, 2007, Lisbon, Portugal . Paper Submission: January 19, 2007.  http://sat07.ecs.soton.ac.uk

SMT Workshop '07, 5th International Workshop on Satisfiability Modulo Theories (affiliated with CAV '2007), 1-2 July, 2007, Berlin, Germany . Paper submission deadline: 23 April, 2007. http://www.lsi.upc.edu/~oliveras/smt07

"Timetabling and Rostering" stream at EURO XXII (the 22nd European Conference on Operational Research), July 8-11, 2007, Prague, Czech Republic .  If you would like to present your work in this stream, please send the title, an abstract of 600 characters, name and contact information for all co-authors to Dario Landa Silva <jds@cs.nott.ac.uk> or Hana Rudova <hanka@fi.muni.cz> by 15th December 2006.

*/Educational Timetabling/* stream at EURO XXII (the 22nd European Conference on Operational Research), July 8-11, 2007, Prague, Czech Republic .  If you would like to present your work in this stream, please send the title, an abstract of 600 characters, name and contact information for all co-authors to Sophia Daskalaki <sdask@upatras.gr> not later than *February 10, 2007*

CADE21, 21st International Conference on Automated Deduction, July 17-20, 2007 (workshops July 15-16), International University Bremen, Germany . Submission of title and abstract: February 16, 2007.  Submission papers: February 23, 2007.  http://www.cadeconference.org/meetings/cade21

AAAI'07, The Twenty-Second National Conference on Artificial Intelligence. July 22-26, 2007, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada .  Paper submission deadline: Feb 6, 2007.  http://www.aaai.org/Conferences/AAAI/aaai07.php

ISSAC 2007, The International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Computation 2007, July 29 to August 1, 2007, Waterloo, Canada .  Deadline for submissions: January 17, 2007 (Midnight [24:00 EST]). http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/issac2007/

CP 2007, 13th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (co-located with ICAPS 2007).  Fall, 2007, Providence, RI, USA .  Conference chairs: Meinolf Sellmann and Laurent Michel.  Program chair: Christian Bessiere.

Career news

- PhD Studies in Symbolic Computation at RISC-Linz

Symbolic computation is the branch of mathematics and computer science which solves problems on symbolic objects representable on a computer. RISC-Linz, the Research Institute for Symbolic Computation of the Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria , is one of the world¡¦s leading institutions for research and education in this new and promising area.

RISC-Linz invites students for its well established Ph.D. program in symbolic computation. For excellent applicants we offer fellowships covering tuition and living expenses.

Applications for studies starting in October should be received by February 15.  For a description of application details and the RISC curriculum, see the web page

      http://www.risc.uni-linz.ac.at/education/phd/

The RISC Ph.D. Coordinator

      phd-coordinator@risc.uni-linz.ac.at

- Open position: Product Manager for ILOG OPL

There is an open position for a Product Manager in the Optimization Product Marketing division at ILOG. The position is centered around ILOG OPL Development studio which is ILOG's modeling IDE for building and deploying models and applications based on both Mathematical Programming (ILOG CPLEX) and Constraints Programming (ILOG CP) technology.

For more information see:

http://ilog.com/greatcareers/viewjob.cfm?jobid=538

Although listed here as a US position, we're open to applicants based in or willing to relocate to Europe, France in particular.

Best regards,

Greger

Greger Ottosson, PhD

Manager, Optimization Product Marketing gottosson@ilog.com

<mailto:gottosson@ilog.com>

ILOG

1681 Route des Dolines           Cell:   +33 628 766 758

Les Taissounieres HB2            Office: +33 492 966 206

06560 Valbonne, FRANCE           Fax:    +33 492 966 162

- Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme

CALL FOR APPLICANTS (2007)

The Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology invites applications for research funding under the Government of  Ireland\222s Embark Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme (2007).

The scheme, in its fifth year, will invest a total of approximately \2004.7 million into the Irish research sector and is open to researchers from all nations who are at an early stage of their postdoctoral research career and who wish to further their research in the sciences, engineering or technology, at an Irish research institution in 2007.

Closing Date: 5.00pm on Friday, 26th January, 2007.

For more information: http://www.ircset.ie/grant_schemes/postdoctoral.html

Candidates interested in applying for one of these to use at the Cork Constraint Computation Centre can contact me:

Gene Freuder

Director, 4C

www.4c.ucc.ie

-Post doc position in Milan ( Italy )

The Department  of Electronics and Information at the Politecnico di Milano  ( Italy ) is looking for 1 post-doc to fill an open research position coupled to the project "CAESAR" of the European Union (http://www.caesar-project.eu). The area of research would be toxicology modelling in view of the REACH legislation; in particular integration of in  vitro and in silico methods, structural pattern learning, and data mining of chemical structures.

Applicants must have at least a Master degree in Science or Engineering  (a Ph.D is preferred), and evidence of significant research accomplishments. The successful applicant will receive a 1 year appointment with possible extensions. Abilities in programming in tools for scientific data analysis (Matlab, Matematica, R, or other) and knowledge about Computational Chemistry are a must.

To apply or ask for more information please contact: Giuseppina Gini (gini@elet.polimi.it)

To apply -  send letter of application, curriculum vitae, statement of research accomplishments and goals, and relevant publications to: the Rector of Politecnico di Milano, piazza L da Vinci 32, 20133 MILANO ( Italy ), before the strict date of 17/02/2007.

A colloquium is scheduled for March 12, 2007, and the position will be filled by March 2007.

-Computing Science Post-Doctoral Positions - Simon Fraser University

Applications are invited for Post-Doctoral Fellowships supporting work on the MX Project, in the Computational Logic Laboratory at Simon Fraser University. The goal of the MX Project is to develop effective techniques for modelling and solving of search and optimization problems using logic. Further information on the project can be found at
http://www.cs.sfu.ca/research/groups/mxp/. Between 1 and 3 fellowships will be offered, depending upon final level of funding and availability of suitable candidates.

Ideal candidates will have background in logic for computing science, with an interest in several of:

*finite model theory and descriptive complexity

*constraint modelling languages

*Logic and databases or database query processing

*solvers for SAT/CSP/SMT/QBF

*combinatorial optimization and algorithms

*knowledge representation or theorem proving

The selected candidate(s) will work closely with the other members of the MX Project team on fundamental theoretical or applied problems related to the project.  Work on the more applied problems may also involve interaction with our industrial partner.

Positions will commence as soon as possible after a candidate is chosen. Current project funding is for one year, with possibility of extension. Funding will depend upon background, but will be not less than Cdn $42,000, with the possibility teaching a one-semester course for additional stipend. Some funds will be available for conference travel.

Simon Fraser University is located atop Burnaby Mountain in Vancouver, Canada . Vancouver thrives as a scenic waterfront city located just minutes away from the mountains and a wide range of outdoor activities. Vancouver's cultural and intellectual pursuits, leisure opportunities, favourable climate, and clean and safe environment are consistently cited as quality of life factors that make it one of the most desirable places in the world to live and work.

Interested applicants should contact one of project leaders:

     Eugenia Ternovska ter@cs.sfu.ca

     David Mitchell mitchell@cs.sfu.ca

For full consideration, application should be made by February 10, 2007.