2012 Quarter 3

REPORT FROM THE ASSOCIATION FOR CONSTRAINT PROGRAMMING

http://4c.ucc.ie/a4cp/

This is a short summary of activities within the ACP during the months July-October 2012.

The 2012 ACP Executive Committee comprises the following people, in alphabetical order (officers identified):

  • Yves Deville
  • John Hooker
  • Jimmy H.M. Lee - Secretary
  • Barry O'Sullivan - President
  • Thomas Schiex - Treasurer
  • Helmut Simonis
  • Peter Stuckey
  • Roland Yap

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

ACP.1. Results of the 2012 Executive Committee Elections

As reported before the CP conference, three new EC members have been elected to replace those whose terms expire at the end of 2012. On behalf of the ACP, the EC would like to congratulate Pierre Flener, Willem-Jan van Hoeve and Guido Tack, on their election to the Executive Committee. The EC would also like to thank John Hooker, Barry O'Sullivan and Peter Stuckey for their contributions to the ACP and the CP community at large during their past terms of office.

According to ACP Bylaw 4.8, Barry O'Sullivan will serve as Past President on the new ACP Executive Committee as a non-voting member. The new EC, which will begin operation in January, 2013, consists of the following members (in alphabetical order): - Yves Deville - Pierre Flener - Willem-Jan van Hoeve - Barry O'Sullivan (ex-officio, non-voting) - Thomas Schiex - Helmut Simonis - Guido Tack - Roland Yap

ACP.2. Comment on CP 2012

On behalf of the ACP, the Executive Committee would like to congratulate the various people responsible for making CP 2012 in Quebec City such a wonderful success. A very special thanks goes to Gilles Pesant and Claude-Guy Quimper (Conference Chairs), Michela Milano (Program Chair), Helmut Simonis (Applications Track Chair), Barry O'Sullivan (Multidisciplinary Track Chair), Meinolf Sellmann (Workshop ), Michele Lombardi and Stanislav Zivny (Doctoral Program Chairs), Louis-Martin Rousseau (Sponsorship Chair), and the members of the various programme committees.

ACP.3. ACP Summer School 2012

This year the ACP summer school took place 24-28 September 2012 in Wrocław, Poland. It was organized by the Institute of Computer Science University of Wrocław by Krzysztof Apt, Witold Charatonik, and Leszek Pacholski. The subject of the school was the theory and practice of constraint programming. The school was very well attended. For details please see: http://acpss2012.ii.uni.wroc.pl

The programme included talks from:

Andrei Bulatov (Constraints: Counting and Approximation) Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~abulatov/

Witold Charatonik (Set Constraints) Wroclaw University, Poland http://www.ii.uni.wroc.pl/~wch/

Agostino Dovier (Constraint Programming and Biology) Udine University, Italy http://sole.dimi.uniud.it/~agostino.dovier/

Willem Jan van Hoeve (Operations Research Techniques in Constraint Programming) Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/vanhoeve/

Peter Jeavons (Constraints and Complexity) University of Oxford, UK http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/peter.jeavons/

Michele Lombardi (Resource Allocation and Scheduling) University of Bologna, Italy http://ai.unibo.it/people/MicheleLombardi

The ACP would like to sincerely thank the organisers for running such an excellent school this year.

ACP.4. ACP Summer School 2013

The 2013 ACP Summer School will take place on the 6th-11th of January 2013 in ANU's Kioloa Costal Campus (Kioloa, New South Wales, Australia). The chair of the Summer School is Toby Walsh, who is working with a local arrangements committee comprising Phil Kilby, Peter Stuckey, Abdul Sattar, Sylvie Thiebaux, Pascal Van Hentenryck, and Mark Wallace. The School is organized by the Optimisation Research Group at NICTA. The theme of the school is solving large scale combinatorial optimisation problems in practice. The topics covered will include: introduction to constraint programming, modelling, integer programming, global constraints, uncertainty, vehicle routing, scheduling, supply networks and research skills. Lecturers include Simon Dunstall, Phil Kilby, Pascal van Hentenryck, Martin Savelsbergh, Peter Stuckey, Mark Wallace and Toby Walsh. For more information please see: http://go.to/cpschool

The ACP would like to wish Toby and his team every success with the summer school.

ACP.5. ACP Distinguished Service Award 2012 -- Professor Eugene Freuder

The selection committee for this award was chaired by John Hooker. The other members were Krzysztof Apt, Yves Deville, Jimmy Lee (ex officio), Michela Milano (ex officio), and Peter Stuckey. The committee recommended that this year's award go to Professor Eugene Freuder. Gene's citation reads as follows: "For contributions to the field of constraint programming through sustained service, including his central role in the creation of the CP research community, its primary conference, professional association, flagship journal, and a leading research institute." Gene was nominated by Francesca Rossi. The ACP would like to congratulate Gene.

ACP.6. ACP Doctoral Research Award 2012

This year's committee responsible for selecting the winning candidate for this award was chaired by Roland Yap. The members of the committee were John Hooker and Thomas Schiex. The recipient of the award was Geoffrey Chu for his doctoral dissertation entitled "Improving Combinatorial Optimization". Geoffrey was nominated by Peter Stuckey (Melbourne). On behalf of the ACP, the Executive Committee would like to once again congratulate Geoffrey on his achievement.

Nina Narodytska, nominated by Toby Walsh, received an honourable mention for her dissertation entitled "Reformulation of Global Constraints."

ACP.7. CP 2013 Conference

The CP 2013 conference will be held in Uppsala, Sweden. The Conference Chairs for the conference will be Mats Carlsson, Pierre Flener, and Justin Pearson. Details of the conference can be found at: http://cp2013.a4cp.org

ACP.8. CP 2013 Program Chair

The ACP is delighted to announce that the CP 2013 Program Chair will be Christian Schulte (KTH, Sweden).

ACP.9. Expressions of Interest in Hosting and CP 2014 and CP 2015

The ACP likes to plan CP conferences two years in advance. We are therefore interested in hearing expressions of interest from those who are considering hosting the conference in 2014 and 2015. A formal call for proposals will be issued early in the new year. In the meantime please consider discussing organising the conference with the ACP Secretary at secretary@a4cp.org