2008 Quarter 2

REPORT FROM THE ASSOCIATION FOR CONSTRAINT PROGRAMMING

This is a short summary of activities within the ACP during the months April-June (including some news from early July) 2008. The current Executive Committee comprises:

  • Officers: Barry O'Sullivan (President), Jimmy H.M. Lee (Secretary), Thomas Schiex (Treasurer), Pedro Meseguer (Conference Coordinator)
  • Other Members: Christian Bessiere, Francesca Rossi, Christian Schulte, Michael Trick
  1. Alain Colmerauer to receive the 2008 ACP Research Excellence Award.

    The Association for Constraint Programming is honoured to announce that Alain Colmerauer (University II of Aix-Marseille, France) is the 2008 recepient of the ACP Research Excellence Award. The award will be give at a special session at CP 2008, followed by an acceptance talk by Alain.

    The previous winners of this award are:

  • 2005 Eugene Freuder, Cork Constraint Computation Centre, University College Cork
  • 2006 Pascal Van Hentenryck, Brown University
  • 2007 Rina Dechter, University of California at Irvine

    Alain was nominated for the award by Frederic Benhamou (University of Nantes). The committee involved in deciding this award was chaired by Barry O'Sullivan (President of the ACP), Jimmy Lee (Secretary of the ACP), Rina Dechter, Eugene Freuder and Peter Stuckey. The chair of the committee would like to thank the members of the committee for their hard work and careful deliberations.

  1. Programme Chair of CP 2009

    The Association for Constraint Programming is pleased to announce that Ian Gent (University of St. Andrews) will be the Programme Chair of CP 2009. Earlier this year, we announced that Pedro Barahona (New University of Lisbon) will be Conference Chair. We congratulate and wish Ian and Pedro every success with the conference.

  2. ACP Summer School 2008

    A very successful ACP Summer School 2008 was held in St. Andrews, Scotland, from June 30th - July 4th 2008. The topic of this year's school was "Modelling with Constraints: Theory and Practice". The summer school was organised by Ian Gent, Karen Petrie, and Angela Miguel. The speakers and tutorialists at the summer school included: Christian Bessiere, Chris Jefferson, Ian Miguel, Barry O'Sullivan, Karen Petrie, Patrick Prosser, Barbara Smith and Toby Walsh. The ACP would like to thank all those involved in the summer school.

  3. Progress on the ACP Doctoral Research Award 2008.

    Nominations for the ACP Doctoral Research Award 2008 have been received and a committee, chaired by Mike Trick, is currently working on the process.

  4. Call for Nominations: Candidates for Election to the ACP-EC.

    We seek nominations for candidates for election to the Executive Committee (EC) of the ACP. Candidates must be nominated by a member of the ACP or a member of the Election Committee. Nominated persons must agree to be a candidate and must write an election statement that will be posted on the ACP election site.

    Please send your nominations to Jimmy Lee to arrive by midnight (California time) on August 10th, 2008.

    We recall that the Executive Committee of the ACP decides the venue of the annual CP international conference, as well as its program and conference chairs. It also organizes other activities such as the CP doctoral programme, the CP summer school, the CP newsletter, web sites, etc. Finally, it retains the surplus from CP conferences and re-invests it in other activities of the CP research community. The current members of the Executive Committee of the Association for Constraint Programming are: Christian Bessiere, Jimmy Lee, Pedro Meseguer, Barry O'Sullivan, Francesca Rossi, Thomas Schiex, Christian Schulte, and Mike Trick.

    Bylaw 5 of the ACP Bylaws dictates the election procedure and rules. The 2008 is a transition year. According to the transition year arrangement of the ACP Bylaws, Barry O'Sullivan and Francesca Rossi will end their term this summer. In addition, we shall run an election for (a) three new regular members to a four year term and (b) two interim members to a two year term to the ACP EC.

    The ACP EC has appointed the following Election Committee:

    • (Chair) Jimmy Lee, Secretary of the ACP
    • Pedro Meseguer
    • Mike Trick

      for the current election exercise.

      Any member of the ACP not already an elected or ex officio member of the EC can stand for election to the EC. One is a member of the ACP if the person has registered in at least one CP conference in the last five years (except if explicitly declining).

      All nominated candidates will be treated equally in the upcoming election. The top 3 elected candidates will serve as regular members of the EC with a 4 year term, and the next 2 will serve as interim members with a 2 year term.

      Elections will take place electronically in August-September 2008. Results will be posted on the ACP web site before CP 2008.

      The full rules are set out in the ACP website at www.a4cp.org.

  5. Sponsorships.

    This year the ACP has agreed to sponsor the CSCLP workshop and CPAIOR. This is in addition to the ACP Summer School, the CP main conference and the CP Doctoral Programme that the ACP also supports.