Volume 8, Number 1, April 2012

Constraint Programming News

volume 8, number 1, April, 2012

Editors:
Jimmy Lee (events, career news)
Eric Monfroy (profiles, publications)
Toby Walsh (news, reports)

CONTENTS

NEWS

REPORTFROM THE ASSOCIATION FOR CONSTRAINT PROGRAMMING

January-March 2012

This is a short summary of activities within the ACP during the months January-March 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. ACP Membership 2012-13

>The ACP-EC encourages all researchers active in the area of constraint programming to ensure they have formally recorded their membership of the association by visiting our web-site and joining up by following the 'Join the ACP' link. Membership of the ACP is required to vote in elections and at the annual General Assembly.

ACP.2. CP 2012 Conference

>Preparations for the CP 2012 conference, to be held in Quebec City, Canada, are well underway. A record number of submissions have been received across the three track of the conference. The Conference Chairs for the conference are Gilles Pesant and Claude-Guy Quimper, with an additional Local Chair in Louis Martin Rousseau. The Program Chair is Michela Milano (Bologna). There are two special tracks at the conference: one focused on applications (chaired by Helmut Simonis) and another on multidisciplinary research (chaired by Barry O'Sullivan).

>The ACP-EC would like to wish the various chairs and members of the organisation committee of the conference a very successful event, and thank them for their hard work and leadership.

ACP.3. Call for Nominations: for the ACP Distinguished Service Award 2012.

>The Executive Committee of the ACP invites nominations for the 2012 ACP award for Distinguished Service to the Constraint Programming Community, which will be presented at CP 2012 in Quebec City, Canada. The purpose of this award is to celebrate those CP community members who have made exceptional contributions to the CP community. Areas of service could include, but are not limited to: association service, service as an editor, conference organisation, representation of CP in other organizations, etc, resulting in positive effects on the field of CP. The recipient of this award will have the costs of is/her participation at the CP conference covered by the ACP. The call text for this award is appended to this report.

The winner of the inaugural award in 2010 was Francesca Rossi (Padova).

ACP.4. ACP Summer School 2012

>This year the 2012 ACP Summer School will take place in Wroclaw, Poland. The School will take place at the Institute of Computer Science of the University of Wroclaw, Poland from the 24-28 September 2012. The school will be devoted to the theory and applications of constraint technology.

The organizers are:

· Krzysztof R. Apt (CWI and University of Amsterdam)

· Witold Charatonik (University of Wroclaw)

· Leszek Pacholski (University of Wroclaw)

For further details please see the school web-site.

ACP.5. ACP-EC Elections in 2012

>This year there will be additional elections to replace those EC members whose terms will expire at the end of this year. A formal call for nominations will be circulated by the ACP Election Committee, which will be chaired by ACP Secretary, Jimmy Lee. Please consider the names of those you think would be suitable for the ACP-EC.

The elected terms of the following EC members come to end on 31/12/2012:

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ACP.6. Expressions of Interest in Hosting CP 2013 and CP 2014

We are resending the Call for Bids for CP 2013 and 2014. Please see the attached .

ACP.7. JSR-331 “Java Constraint Programming API” Update

In March-2012 JSR-331 “Java Constraint Programming API” successfully passed the JCP Executive Committee Final Approval Ballot and became an official standard.

JSR-331 already comes with 3 working implementations based on open-source CP solvers: Choco, JaCoP, and Constrainer.  Several more CP vendors expressed their intentions to provide JSR-331 implementations including IBM CP Optimizer, Oracle, Cream, JSetL, and JOpt. Read more at CP Standardization Blog.

JSR-331 software and documentation are available for free downloads from JCP or from http://openrules.com/jsr331. All CP specialists who want to contribute may get an access to the source code. There is a Google Discussion Group where you may post questions and comments.

The ACP would like to sincerely thank Jacob Feldman (OpenRules) and Narendra Jussien (Nantes) for their hard work and leadership on this initiative. Having this standard has the potential to create signficiant opportunities for the uptake of CP technology in the commercial world.

ACP.8. Memoriam: David Waltz, Columbia University

The ACP was saddened to hear the news that David Waltz, a pioneer in the area of constraint satisfaction and filtering algorithms, passed away on the 22nd of March 2012, in hospital in Princeton, NJ, after a valiant fight against brain cancer.

In Memoriam: David L. Waltz, CCLS Director (Columbia University)

David L. Waltz, Computer Science Pioneer, Dies at 68 (New York Times)

CALL FOR PROPOSALS TO HOST CP-2013 or CP-2014

We invite proposals to host the 19th and 20th International Conferences on the Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP-2013|4). Proposals are due on or before March 1st, 2012 (revised deadline). 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 2012 will be held en Quebec City (Canada). Previous CP conference have been held in Perugia (Italy), St. Andrews (Scotland), Lisbon (Portugal), Sydney (AUS), Providence RI (USA), Nantes (France), 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:

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Proposal for conference chair(s).

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Local CP community support.

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University, government and industry support, especially financial.

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Proposed dates, and flexibility around these dates.

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Co-located events that might be held alongside CP.

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Conference and exhibition facilities (CP typically attracts between 200 and 250 delegates).

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Accommodation and food services.

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Site accessibility, attractiveness, and desirability.

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Previous experience in running conferences and workshops.

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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.

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS FOR THE Association for Constraint Programming DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD 2012

OVERVIEW

The Executive Committee of the ACP invites nominations for the 2012 ACP award for Distinguished Service to the Constraint Programming Community, which will be presented at CP 2012 in Quebec City, Canada. The purpose of this award is to celebrate those CP community members who have made exceptional contributions to the CP community. Areas of service could include, but are not limited to: association service, service as an editor, conference organisation, representation of CP in other organizations, etc, resulting in positive effects on the field of CP. The recipient of this award will have the costs of is/her participation at the CP conference covered by the ACP.

ELIGIBILITY

Nominations for this award are invited from members of the ACP.

NOMINATION PROCESS

A nomination package consists of a nomination form from one nominator, and reference letters from at least 2 references.

Typically, a nominator is somebody who knows the nominee very well, and locates the references, ensuring that they do their parts in time to produce a convincing nomination package. Ideally, a reference is a well known member of the CP community who has never had a very close relationship with the nominee, but who can speak with authority for him or her.

Nomination forms should follow the form below and should be sent (nomination forms by the nominators, and reference forms by references) by email to secretary@cp-online.org.

TIMEFRAME

The nomination package must arrive at the above address by June 1st, 2012. We cannot accept anything received after that date. We will acknowledge receipt of nominations. The decision will be available on July 14th, 2012.

AWARD COMMITTEE

Every other year, an Award Commmittee will decide the award receipient among the nominees, and will include: the president and secretary of the ACP-EC, two previous recipients of an ACP award or senior members of the community, and the program chair of the CP conference where the award will be given. Members of the award committee cannot be candidates, nor can they support a candidate by being a nominator or a reference.

Enquiries concerning nominations should be directed to the ACP EC Secretary at the address .

_____________________________ Nomination Form _______________________________

NOMINATION FORM: ACP DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD

Please answer, as completely as possible, Questions 1 to 5 by editing this form directly, and email to secretary@cp-online.org. The email submission must be in plain text (ASCII).

The information on this form is confidential. Neither the candidate nor the references will be informed of the views you express.

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Nominator's Name and Affiliation(first, middle, last; address; telephone; fax; and email address)

2.References (list at least 2 people who will submit reference reports)

3.Candidate's Name and Affiliation (first, middle, last; address; telephone; fax; email address; and webpage)

4.List principal positions of service to the CP community, and briefly describe primary responsibilities for each position. Examples of service positions include society service, service as an editor, conference organization, etc., resulting in positive effects on the field of CP.

· Position:

· Dates:

· Responsibilities:

5.Proposed Citation (to appear on the award certificate -- citation should begin "For contributions to the field of constraint programming through sustained service ..." followed by a phrase of not more than 20 carefully edited words that reflect this candidate's demonstrated service to the community).

                              

Constraints Journal Surveys and Application papers

Dear members of the CP community,

>I would like to remind you that the "Constraints" journal recently created "Survey" and "Application" paper categories. Survey papers are often highly cited and offer a rare opportunity to share specific expertise. They are very useful to the community and arise naturally as initial chapters of Ph.D. dissertations. Application papers are a witness to the success and relevance of CP. In addition to reporting on them in publications dedicated to the appropriate application area, we want to encourage authors to write up papers focusing on and detailing the CP aspects of their work.

The first such papers have recently been published:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10601-011-9115-6

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10601-012-9118-y

>The two editorial board members responsible for these tracks, Thomas Schiex (Thomas.Schiex@toulouse.inra.fr) for Surveys and Helmut Simonis (h.simonis@4c.ucc.ie) for Applications, are actively seeking out submissions. If you know of some work that would fit well into these two categories, I encourage you to contact them directly.

Regards,

Gilles Pesant

Editor-in-Chief

CP letters publication

Dear all,

I am happy to inform you that CP letters is alive again.  See www.cp-letters.org or www.constraint-programming.org/letters

Volume 5 has just begun.  It contains the article "Symmetry Breaking with Polynomial Delay" written by T. Januschowski, B. Smith and M.R.C van Dongen

best regards

jean-charles régin

CFP: CP 2012 Workshop Programme

The CP 2012 Workshop Chair invites proposals for the Workshop Program.

>CP 2012 workshops will provide an informal setting where workshop participants will have the opportunity to discuss specific technical topics in an atmosphere that facilitates the active exchange of ideas. It is an opportunity to disseminate work in progress or to promote new and emerging areas within the field of constraints. The topics of the workshops can cover any area related to constraints and any related cross-disciplinary areas.

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>Workshops can be half-day or full-day during the CP 2012 Conference. The internal format of the workshop will be determined by the organizers of each workshop. Participants can register for workshops only.

Important Dates

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Proposal Submissions

>Proposals for workshops should contain the following information:

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· A brief discussion of why and to whom the workshop is of interest.

· A list of tentatively confirmed attendees, if available.

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· The name and email address of the main organizer.

Responsibilities of the Workshop Organizers

>Each workshop main organizer will be responsible for:

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· Providing a brief description of the workshop for the conference program.

· Selecting submitted papers.

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Responsibilities of the CP 2012 Organizing Committee

The CP 2012 organizing committee will be responsible for the following:

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Submitting a Proposal

All proposals should be submitted by electronic mail (in ASCII), to the Workshop Chair as follows:

Meinolf Sellmann

IBM Research Watson

[firstname]@ US dot IBM dot COM

JOURNALS

 

CONSTRAINTS Journal Accepted Papers

Volume 17, Number 2 / April 2012

Constraint-based Very Large-Scale Neighborhood search

Sébastien Mouthuy, Pascal Van Hentenryck and Yves Deville

A CP framework for testing CP

Nadjib Lazaar, Arnaud Gotlieb and Yahia Lebbah

Partial symmetry breaking by local search in the group

Steve D. Prestwich, Brahim Hnich, Helmut Simonis, Roberto Rossi and S. Armagan Tarim

Improvements of constraint programming and hybrid methods for scheduling of tests on vehicle prototypes (application)

Kamol Limtanyakul and Uwe Schwiegelshohn

  

Artificial Intelligence Journal: 6th call for applications for AIJ sponsorships.

 

Artificial Intelligence Journal: funding opportunities for promoting AI research Deadline for proposals: May 13, 2012. More details...

 

 

>PUBLICATIONS:

Recent books

Autonomous Search. Y. Hamadi, E. Monfroy and F. Saubion (Eds). Now available at Springer.

EVENTS

>Competitions

>ICKEPS 2012@ICAPS 2012, 4th International Competition on Knowledge Engineering for Planning and Scheduling, June 25-29 2012, Atibaia, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Design Process Track Paper submission deadline: February 17, 2012. Challenge Track Paper submission deadline: April 1, 2012.

AIMMS MOPTA Modeling Competition "Scheduling in SmartGrids". Submission deadline: May 31, 2012.

>Minizinc Challenge 2012. The aim of the MiniZinc challenge is to compare various constraint solving technologies on the same problems.  The focus is on finite domain propagation solvers.  An auxiliary aim is to build up a library of interesting problem models, which can be used to compare solvers and solving technologies.

>Entrants to the challenge provide an interface to their solver via the FlatZinc solver inputs language and a set of MiniZinc global constraint definitions specialized for their solver.  Each solver is run on 100 MiniZinc model instances.

IMPORTANT DATES

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>For registration details, the challenge rules and other details see the 2012 MiniZinc challenge website.

>For details of the MiniZinc modelling language and the FlatZinc solver input language, see the MiniZinc website.

>Note that even if you dont intend to submit a solver to the challenge you are welcome, encouraged even, to submit MiniZinc problems for use in the challenge directly to the organizers or to the MiniZinc wiki.

Conferences

ICCI 2012, 8th International Conference on Computational Intelligence, April 11-13, 2012, Barcelona, Spain.

ECCO 2012, 25th Conference of the European Chapter on Combinatorial Optimization, April 26-28, 2012, Antalya, Turkey.

ICAISC, 11th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, April 29 - May 3, 2012, Zakopane, Poland.

FLAIRS 2012, 25th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference Conference Silver Anniversary, May 23-25, 2012, Marco Island, Florida, USA.

AI 2012, 25th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence, May 28-30, 2012, York Univeristy, Toronto, Canada.

CPAIOR 2012, 9th International Conference on Integration of Artificial Intelligence and Operations Research Techniques in Constraint Programming, May 28 - June 1, 2012, Nantes, France.

o BPPC 12@CPAIOR 2012, 4th International Workshop on Bin Packing and Placement Constraints, May 29 2012, Nantes, France.

CompSust 12, 3rd International Conference on Computational Sustainability, July 5-6, 2012, Biocenter, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Abstract submission deadline: May 7, 2012.

KR 2012, 13th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, June 10-14, 2012, Rome, Italy.

CEC 2012@WCCI, Special Session on Evolutionary Computation in Scheduling 2012 IEEE World Congress on Evolutionary Computation, June 10-15, 2012, Brisbane, Australia.

SAT 2012, 15th International Conference on Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing, June 17-20, 2012, Trento, Italy.

o CSPSAT 2012@SAT 2012, 2nd International Workshop on the Cross-Fertilization Between CSP and SAT. Paper submission deadline: April 8, 2012.

VEROLOG 2012, 1st meeting of the EURO working Group on Vehicle Routing and Logistics Optimization, June 18-20, 2012, Bologna, Italy.

ICAPS 2012, 22nd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, June 25-29, 2012, Atibaia, Sao Paulo, Brazil.

o TAMPRA 2012@ICAPS 2012, Combining Task and Motion Planning for Real-World Applications.

o Special Track@ICAPS 2012, Continuous Planning, 22nd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling.

o IPC 2012@ICAPS 2012, 3rd Workshop on International Planning Competition.

o PSTL 2012@ICAPS 2012, Workshop on Planning and Scheduling with Timelines. Paper submission deadline: April 6, 2012.

o COPLAS 2012@ICAPS 2012, Workshop on Constraint Satisfaction Techniques for Planning and Scheduling Problems. Paper submission deadline: April 6, 2012.

o PlanEx 2012@ICAPS 2012, 5th Workshop on Planning and Plan Execution for Real-World Systems. Paper submission deadline: April 6, 2012.

o SPARK 2012@ICAPS 2012, Workshop on Scheduling and Planning Applications.

o HSDIP 2012@ICAPS 2012, Workshop on Heuristics and Search for Domain-Independent Planning.

o DEMO 2012@ICAPS 2012, System Demonstrations and Exhibits program.

o DC 2012@ICAPS 2012, ICAPS Doctoral Consortium.

EURO 2012, 25th European Conference on Operational Research, July 8-11, 2012, Vilnius, Lithuania.

SoCS 2012, 5th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search, July 19-21, 2012, Niagara Falls, Canada and Buffalo, New York. Submission deadline: April 15, 2012.

AAAI 2012, 26th Conference on Artificial Intelligence, July 22-26, 2012, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Tutorial Forum@AAAI 2012, 26th Conference on Artificial Intelligence, July 22-26, 2012, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

UAI 2012, 28th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, August 15-17, 2012, Catalina Island, USA.

ISMP 2012, 21st International Symposium on Mathematical Programming, Berlin, Germany, August 19-24, 2012. Abstract submission deadline: April 15, 2012.

ECAI 2012, 20th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, August 27-31, 2012, Montpellier, France.  Workshop paper submission deadline: May 28, 2012.

o DREAMAP 2012@ECAI 2012, Workshop on Diagnostic REAsoning: Model Analysis and Performance. Paper submission deadline: May 28, 2012.

o STAIRS 2012@ECAI 2012, 6th "Starting Artificial Intelligence Research" Symposium. Paper submission deadline: May 25, 2012.

o AIGM 2012@ECAI 2012, Workshop on algorithmic issues for inference in graphical models. Paper submission deadline: May 31, 2012.

o M-PREF 2012@ECAI 2012, 6th Multidisciplinary Workshop on Advances in Preference Handling. Paper submission deadline: June 1, 2012.

o CoCoMile 2012@ECAI 2012, Workshop on Combining Constraint solving with Mining and Learning. Paper submission deadline: May 28, 2012.

PRICAI 2012, 12th Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, August 27-31, 2012, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia.

OR 2012, 54th Conference of the UK Operational Research Society, Edinburgh, September 4-6, 2012.

OR 2012, INTERNATIONAL ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE GERMAN OPERATIONS RESEARCH SOCIETY, September 4-7, 2012, Hannover, Germany.  Abstract deadline: April 30, 2012.

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ANTS 2012, 8th International Conference on Swarm Intelligence, September 12-14, 2012, Brussels, Belgium.

Matheuristics'2012, 4th International Workshop on Model-Based Metaheuristics, September 16-21, 2012, Angra dos Reis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

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CP 2012, 18th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, October 8-12, 2012, Quebec City, Canada. Abstract submission deadline: April 19, 2012.

o DP@CP 2012, Doctoral Programme. Paper submission deadline: 15 June 2012.

MICAI-2012, 11th Mexican International Conference on ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, October 27 - November 4, 2012, San Luis Potosi, Mexico. Submission deadlines: June 1 for abstract and June 15 for PDF.

· LION 2013, 7th Learning and Intelligent OptimizatioN Conference, January 7-11, 2013, Catania, Italy.  Collateral workshop proposal deadline: June 30, 2012. Paper submission deadline: October 14, 2012.

· CLAIO, Congreso Latino-Iberoamericano de Investigacion Operativa, September 24-28 2012, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

CAREER NEWS

Postdoc position in planning at University Saarbruecken

Dear all,

As of this April, a Postdoc position in planning will be available under my supervision at the University of Saarbruecken, Germany. The position offers full research freedom and there are no project duties whatsoever. Duration can be flexibly negotiated, but is expected to be 1-2 years for a start. Renumeration depends on experience; I can give more details on request.

If you could be interested in this position, please just send me an email to get in touch.

Best regards,

Joerg Hoffmann[joerg.hoffmann@loria.fr]

Postdoc position at LIRMM, Montpellier, France : High Performance Algebraic Computing

A postdoc  position  in  computer science  at  LIRMM, Montpellier, France is available in  the framework of the HPAC project.

Informations & Application

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Please  send a  CV and  reference letters  by email  to Pascal Giorgi (pascal.giorgi@lirmm.fr) to apply for this position.

Project

Keywords: computer algebra, linear algebra, finite fields, HPC, C/C++ programming 

>This postdoc position is available within the project HPAC (High Performance Algebraic Computing) funded for four years by the french research agency ANR under  grant ANR-11-BS02-013. The overall ambition of the project HPAC is to provide international reference high-performance libraries for exact linear algebra and algebraic systems on multi-processor architecture and to influence parallel programming approaches for algebraic computing.  This project gathers researchers working on parallel language and environments, middleware software engineering, exact linear algebra, algebraic systems, cryptology and symbolic-numeric verified computations. The major challenge is the design and implementation of verified mathematical algorithms with provable, adaptive and sustainable performance. LINBOX and FGB are two international reference mathematical libraries.  LINBOX offers a large panel of functionalities in exact linear algebra and is used by computer algebra systems such as SAGE for instance.  FGB is the reference for Gröbner bases computations usable, for instance, via MAPLE. Both libraries are sequential and rely on exact linear algebra kernels. The central goal of the HPAC project is to extend their efficiency to new trend parallel architectures such as clusters of multi-processor systems and graphics processing units in order to tackle a broader class of problems in lattice cryptography and algebraic cryptanalysis.

>In order to guarantee sufficient performances, the first goal of the project HPAC is to design new parallel building blocks for dense linear algebra over finite fields, since they are the core of most exact computations. In particular, this concerns matrix multiplication and normal form such as the echelon form. The purpose of this postdoc position is to work on the design and the implementation of algorithm for such problems which guarantee sustainable performances on a shared memory multi-processor systems. A similar work may also be done on Graphic Processor Unit (GPU). One of the difficulty will be to manipulate elements of a finite fields which possibly do not directly map to the native 64 bit integer representation available in modern processor. For instance, one of our target is finite fields with few hundred of bits size elements. Another purpose of this postdoc is to design new methods which take advantage of a possible block structure in the matrix representation as the one arising in the Gr style='font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>ö >bner basis computations.

Qualifications

>The candidate must hold a Ph.D in either computer science or in computational mathematics. He/She must have a strong knowledge of linear algebra algorithms and C/C++ programming. An experience in either high performance computing or computer algebra would be a strong advantage to incorporate our project.

pdf version of this announce. 

Doctoral Student Positions in Information and Communication Technologies at University of Trento, Italy

Project

>Doctoral Student Positions in Information and Communication Technologies on the research project "Advanced SMT Techniques for Word-level Formal Verification - (WOLF)" are available at the International Doctorate School in Information and Communication Technologies of the University of Trento, Italy, under the joint supervision of:

ALESSANDRO CIMATTI,

>Embedded Systems Research Unit,

>FBK-Irst,

>via Sommarive 18, I-38123 Povo, Trento, Italy

ROBERTO SEBASTIANI

>Software Engineering & Formal Methods Research Program

>DISI, University of Trento,

>via Sommarive 14, I-38123 Povo, Trento, Italy.

>The research activity will be carried out jointly within the Embedded Systems (ES) Research Unit of the Center for Scientific and Technological Research of the Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK), Trento, and the Software Engineering & Formal Methods (SE&FM) Research Program, at Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science (DISI) of University of Trento.

>The research activity will aim at investigating and developing novel techniques, methodologies and support tools for Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) for the formal verification of systems.  This work will be part of the "Advanced SMT Techniques for Word-level Formal Verification - (WOLF)" project, a three-year research project supported by SRC/GRC, in strict collaboration with the Formal Verification Group at Intel, Haifa, and other major HW companies.

>The goal of the WOLF project is to provide a comprehensive SMT package to support effective formal verification of systems ranging from RTL circuits all the way up to high-level hardware description languages (e.g. SystemC) and software. The package will be implemented on top of the MathSAT SMT platform, and provided as an API.

Ph.D. courses will start in Autumn 2012, and the thesis must be completed in three or four years. People enrolled Ph.D. courses are expected to move to Trento, and will receive monetary support during phases of their activity.

Candidate Profile

>The ideal candidate should have an MS or equivalent degree in computer science, mathematics or electronic engineering, and combine solid theoretical background and excellent software development skills (in particular C/C++).

>The candidate should be able to work in a collaborative environment, with a strong commitment to reaching research excellence and achieving assigned objectives.

Background knowledge and/or previous experience in the following areas (in order of preference), though not mandatory, will be considered very favorably:

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Applications and Inquiries

Interested candidates should inquire for further information and/or apply by sending email to wolf-recruit@disi.unitn.it

Applications should contain a statement of interest, with a Curriculum Vitae, and three reference persons. PDF format is strongly encouraged.

Emails will be automatically processed and should have     'PHD ON WOLF PROJECT' as subject.

Contact Person

Prof. ROBERTO SEBASTIANI ()

>Software Engineering & Formal Methods Research Program

>DISI, University of Trento,

>via Sommarive 14, I-38100 Povo, Trento, Italy.

The Embedded Systems Research Unit at FBK

>The Embedded Systems Unit consists of about 15 persons, including researchers, post-Doc, Ph.D. students, and programmers. The Unit carries out research, tool development and technology transfer in the fields of design and verification of embedded systems.

Current research directions include:

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>The Embedded Systems Unit is part of Fondazione Bruno Kessler, formerly Istituto Trentino di Cultura, a public research institute of the Autonomous Province of Trento (Italy), founded in 1976. The institute, through its center for the scientific and technological research, is active in the areas of Information Technology, Microsystems, and Physical Chemistry of Surfaces and Interfaces. Today, FBK is an internationally recognized research institute, collaborating with industries, universities, and public and private laboratories in Italy and abroad. The institute's applied and basic research activities aim at resolving real-world problems, driven by the need for technological innovation in society and industry.

The SW Engineering & Formal Methods Research Program at DISI

>The SW Engineering & Formal Methods R. P. at DISI currently consists on 5 faculties, various post-docs and PhD students. The Unit carries out research, tool development and technology transfer in the fields of Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering, Agent-oriented SW engineering, Security, and Formal Methods.

Referring to formal methods, current research directions include:

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>The R.P. is part of the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, DISI of University of Trento. University of Trento in the latest years has always been rated among the top-three small&medium-size universities in Italy.  DISI currently consists of 50 faculties, 68 research staff and support people, 21 postdocs and 146 Doctoral students, plus administrative and technical staff. DISI covers all the different areas of information technology (computer science, telecommunications, and electronics) and their applications.  These disciplines above are studied individually but also with a strong focus on their integration,

Location

>Trento is a lively town of about 100.000 inhabitants, located 130 km south of the border between Italy and Austria. It is well known for the beauty of its mountains and lakes, and it offers the possibility to practice a wide range of sports.  Trento enjoys a rich cultural and historical heritage, and it is the ideal starting point for day trips to famous towns such as Venice or Verona, as well as to enjoy great naturalistic journeys.  Detailed information about Trento and its region.

PhD position in ICT at University of Trento, Italy.

Call for one PhD position in ICT on "Application of SAT- and SMT-based optimization algorithms to requirement engineering" at Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Trento, Italy.

Advisors: Prof. John Mylopoulos and Prof. Roberto Sebastiani

 

Eligibility Criteria

Candidates are required to have a master -- or equivalent -- degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or Mathematics, or to obtain it withing November 1st 2011.

>The ideal candidates should have a good background in logic and in software engineering. A background knowledge in Propositional Satisfiability (SAT), Satisfiability Modulo Theory (SMT), Automated Reasoning, Knowledge Representation & Reasoning or Formal Methods would be very-positively evaluated.

>All the positions are covered by a scholarship, amounting roughly to 51,000 Euros over the three years. Substantial extra funding is available for participation in international conferences, schools, and workshops.

Description

>Over the past decade, logic-based goal-oriented requirements modeling languages have been used in Computer Science in order to represent software requirements, business objectives and design qualities. Such models extend traditional AI planning techniques for representing goals by allowing for partially defined and possibly inconsistent goals. In past work by the proposers, a framework for reasoning with such goal models has been proposed.

>The goal of the PhD project is to investigate and implement novel automated reasoning procedures --or to adapt existing ones-- for efficiently solving requirements problems expressed as goal models, for optimizing the solutions according to required criteria and, since requirements evolve with time, to minimize the effort of finding new solutions and maximizing the reuse of old solutions.  In particular, a significant effort will be devoted to investigate and adapt SAT- and SMT-based algorithms for finding optimal solutions to parameterized goal models.

Application

Interested candidates should inquire for further information and/or apply by sending email to roberto.sebastiani@disi.unitn.it

Applications should contain a statement of interest, with a Curriculum Vitae, and three reference persons. PDF format is strongly encouraged.

Emails will be automatically processed and should have as subject: 'PHD ON LUCRETIUS PROJECT'

INFORMAL ENQUIRIES ARE ENCOURAGED. You can get in touch with Prof. Roberto Sebastiani (roberto.sebastiani@disi.unitn.it, +39.0461.281514), in order to have a better understanding of possible research activities and the formal application details.

>FUNDING: The position is funded by the project “Lucretius: Foundations for Software Evolution", thanks to an ERC (European Research Council) advanced grant awarded to Prof. John Mylopoulos (2011-2016). The positions is within the Software Engineering and Formal Methods group, Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science and the ICT Doctoral School of the Department of the University of Trento, Trento, Italy.

 

Research fellows - supply chain optimisation & automated planning and scheduling, University of Melbourne

 

>The University of Melbourne is seeking outstanding Research Fellows to conduct leading edge research in supply chain optimisation and automated planning for mine scheduling.

>The positions will be located in the Department of Computing and Information   Systems within the Melbourne School of Engineering.

>Salary $100,355-$115,715 AUD p.a. (Senior Research Fellow) or $81,925-$97,283  (Research Fellow) plus 9% superannuation; Employment type: Full-time Fixed Term

>The successful candidates will conduct leading-edge research and development in the area of optimisation for mine scheduling. The work is part of an ARC funded project, "Making the Pilbara Blend: Agile Mine Scheduling through Contingent Planning". As part of the team you would be involved in discovering more agile contingent planning techniques for solving new classes of scheduling and planning problems. The overarching responsibility of this position will be the development of optimisation techniques for synthesising more robust plans for short term production scheduling of iron ore in distributed, multi-mine pit settings.

>The role of the Supply Chain Optimisation Fellow will involve computational approaches to optimising supply chain management, such as constraint solving techniques, combinatorial optimisation and/or network flow techniques, especially those for distributed multi-agent problems.

>The role of the Automated Planning and Scheduling Fellow will involve planning languages such as those based on the situation calculus, classical planning techniques and/or model-checking techniques, especially those for distributed multi-agent problems. 

>

>This project tackles a challenging problem faced in mine scheduling. An increased need for consistent quality has occurred at the same time as the complexity of modern day mining operations has increased, across multiple mine sites with variable ore grades and increasing infrastructure constraints. There is a pressing need for more agile mining techniques that maximise net present value (NPV) while commodating the complexities and uncertainties inherent in modern day mining operations.

>

>The goal of this project is to bring together automated planning techniques with constraint programming to address this paradigm shift. The research tackles plan synthesis for the multi-commodity, multi-mine site supply chain problem and promises to lead to improved techniques for collaborative planning and solving hard constraint problems. The theoretical significance of this project derives from the fundamental challenge posed by the problem underlying dynamic scheduling. On the one hand, optimisation must take into account nondeterminism - the uncertain outcomes of actions inherent in the problem - and on the other must lead to feasible plans for each mine site - while continuing to solve the necessary constraints for the overall supply chain schedule during the course of continuing (non-terminating) execution.

>The project will develop agile scheduling techniques of great economic importance.  Carefully planned scheduling has the potential to reduce the need for new infrastructure, minimising environmental impacts and maximising regeneration after mining. More details...

RESEARCH GROUP

Optimisation group of NICTA

Intelligent Agent Laboratory (Agentlab)

G12 Constraint Programming Platform

 

APPLICATION

Research Fellow in Supply Chain Optimisation: position number 0028933 (closing 3 June 2012)

Research Fellow in Automated Planning and Scheduling: position number 0028932 (closing 3 June 2012)

Contact:

For more information, please contact Adrian Pearce

 

Open position: Research Director at SINTEF Applied Mathematics

 

>SINTEF is the largest, multidisciplinary, contract research organization in Scandinavia. Each year we perform more than 7000 research projects for some 2000 clients in about 60 different countries.

>We are looking for a new RESEARCH DIRECTOR to head the Department of Applied Mathematics, one of nine departments within the research division for Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The department consists of 44 researchers who focuses on innovative use of mathematical and numerical methods across a variety of application areas. Core research areas include computational geometry, optimization, numerical simulation, visualization, and parallel computing.

Responsibilities:

>The Research Director is responsible for further strategic development of the Department's research and competence areas, international network, market segments, and staff. The Director heads a team of research managers and chief research scientists. Among the Director's main tasks are to inspire and motivate the staff, to contribute to marketing and sales processes, to oversee the general direction of research projects, and to communicate with major customers and funding agencies, as well as day-to-day management of the Department.

>The Research Director will be part of the management team at SINTEF ICT and as such will share the responsibility for developing and reaching SINTEF ICT's goals, as well as the overall goals of SINTEF.

The Department has offices in Oslo and Trondheim, but the Research Director will be based in Oslo.

Qualifications:

>We seek a candidate who combines in-depth knowledge and strategic foresight in the Department's research and market areas with proven, excellent leadership abilities for researchers. The candidate must be market and business oriented. Preferably, the Research Director should be well reputed in the international applied mathematics community. High ethical standards are important at SINTEF.

For further information on the position, please contact Executive Vice President Aage Thunem on mobile no. +47 930 58 951, or e-mail.

Application including cover letter, CV and proof of education should be submitted using our on-line application system alias

Application deadline: 2012-05-21

 

Research Fellow in Automated Planning, University of Huddersfield, UK

  Research Fellow

  £31,309 - £35,218

  University of Huddersfield, UK

  Fixed term appointment until 31 January 2014

  Ref: 6257

The School of Computing and Engineering is seeking a Research Fellow to carry out a program of research in the Department of Informatics. We are seeking a researcher with expertise in the specific research area of Artificial Intelligence known as Automated Planning (especially areas of Planning related to Knowledge Engineering, Path Planning, and Machine Learning).

>You should be educated up to PhD level, with a relevant publication track record within the specified research area.  You must be able to demonstrate engagement with current research activities in your field, have excellent communication skills, possess some teaching experience, and have a proven ability to work in a team. Additionally, you must be able to lead research in the specific research area.

>For further details and an application form visit www.hud.ac.uk/jobs. Alternatively contact the Personnel Office on 01484 472845.

Closing date: 28 May 2012.

Interview date: 20 June 2012.

 

Jobs at Quintiq

Quintiq is a software company specializing in advanced planning and scheduling software. Quintiq was founded in 's-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands, in September 1997 by five computer programmers. Since then Quintiq has grown from a group of five programmers in a tiny office to a company with hundreds of employees in offices around the world.

Quintiq software is currently in use in 74 countries, being used by organizations involved in mining, steel processing, transport, airports, security, healthcare, broadcasting, and many more. Quintiq software plans parcel deliveries in real time for DHL in more than 40 countries; it schedules trains throughout Europe; plans the production of 25% of all aluminum produced in the world; and rosters all air traffic controllers in Canada in two languages, across five time zones and 150 locations.

In line with our rapid expansion, we are looking for the brightest computer scientists, algorithms experts and business analysts.

Please check the link.

We also have opening in Europe. Please visit

Feel free to contact me if you are interested or forward it to someone who will be interested.

I will be available to chat or dicuss further during the ICAPS 2012 conference.

With regards

Debdeep Banerjee

debdeep.banerjee@quintiq.com