CFP: CP-AI-OR'05 - first call for papers

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F I R S T C A L L F O R P A P E R S

International Conference on Integration of AI and OR Techniques
in Constraint Programming for Combinatorial Optimisation Problems


CP-AI-OR'05


May 30-June 1, 2005, Prague, Czech Republic

http://cpaior05.mff.cuni.cz/



After a successful series of five CP-AI-OR international workshops (Ferrara,
Paderborn, Ashford, Le Croisic, and Montreal) devoted to integration of
Constraint Programming, Artificial Intelligence, and Operations Research
techniques, in 2004 CP-AI-OR became a conference with the first meeting held
in Nice (France) with more than 100 participants. In 2005, the Second
CP-AI-OR Conference will be held in Prague (Czech Republic), a beautiful
city in the heart of Europe.

The aim of the conference is to bring together interested researchers from
AI and OR, and to give them the opportunity to show how the integration of
techniques from AI and OR can lead to interesting results on large scale and
complex problems. We explicitly welcome new ideas and methods for
integrating OR and AI techniques that have arisen from real-world
applications.

CP-AI-OR is intended primarily as a forum to focus on the integration and
hybridization of the approaches of CP, AI, and OR technologies. A secondary
aim is to provide an opportunity for researchers in one area to learn about
techniques in others. Therefore, papers that actively combine, integrate or
contrast approaches from more than one of the areas are solicited. High
quality pure papers from a single area are eligible provided that they are
of interest to other communities involved.

As in previous years, CP-AI-OR'05 will be preceded by a Master
Class where leading researchers give introductory and overview talks
in a given area. This year, the topic of the Master Class will be
Metaheuristics and Constraint Programming. In the morning, an overview
of the main metaheuristics will be given by leading researchers in the
area and the afternoon will be devoted to some combinations of constraint
programming and metaheuristics. The Master Class is intended for PhD
students, researchers, and practitioners.



The program committee invites submissions that include but are not limited
to the following topics:

- Integration of constraint relaxation methods, e.g. Constraint propagation,
Cutting planes, Reduced costs, Global constraints, Graph algorithms,
Dynamic programming, Lagrangean and convex relaxations, Heuristic functions
based on constraint relaxation.

- Integration of search and solving methods, e.g. Branch and bound,
Intelligent backtracking, Incomplete search, Randomized search,
Column generation and other decomposition methods, Local search,
Meta-heuristics.

- Forms of integration, e.g. Static/dynamic problem decomposition,
Linking variables and constraints in different solvers,
Transformations between models and solvers,
Methods using information derived by other solving methods,
Collaboration between concurrent methods, models, and solvers.

- Problems, modeling, and applications.


IMPORTANT DATES FOR AUTHORS
(THE DEADLINES ARE STRICT DUE TO PUBLISHER CONSTRAINTS)

Deadline for abstracts January 10, 2005
Deadline for paper submissions January 16, 2005
Notification of acceptance February 21, 2005
Final paper due March 7, 2005

Master Class May 29, 2005
CP-AI-OR'05 May 30-June 1, 2005

The length of a standard technical paper is 15 pages. The conference
proceedings will be published in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer
Science series (http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/index.html). Authors are
requested to prepare their papers according to the Springer instructions
(http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html). All papers are to be
submitted electronically in a PDF or PS format by following the instructions
at the URL http://cpaior05.mff.cuni.cz/.


PROGRAM CO-CHAIRS

Roman Bartak, Charles University, Czech Republic
Michela Milano, Universita di Bologna, Italy


MASTER CLASS CHAIR

Gilles Pesant, Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Canada


PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Abderrahmane Aggoun, Cosytec, France
Philippe Baptiste, Ecole Polytechnique, France
Roman Bartak, Charles University, Czech Republic
Chris Beck, University of Toronto, Canada
Mats Carlsson, SICS, Sweden
Ondrej Cepek, Charles University, Czech Republic
Hani El Sakkout, CISCO, UK
Bernard Gendron, CRT and Univ. of Montreal, Canada
Carmen Gervet, IC-Parc, UK
Carla Gomes, Cornell University, USA
John Hooker, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Narendra Jussien, Ecole des Mines de Nantes, France
Stefan Karisch, Carmen Systems, Canada
Francois Laburthe, Bouygues, France
Andrea Lodi, Univ. of Bologna, Italy
Michela Milano, Univ. of Bologna, Italy
George Nemhauser, Univ. of Georgia Tech, USA
Gilles Pesant, CRT and Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Canada
Jean-Francois Puget, ILOG, France
Jean-Charles Regin, ILOG, France
Michel Rueher, Univ. of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France
Meinolf Sellmann, Brown University, USA
Helmut Simonis, IC-Parc, UK
Gilles Trombettoni, Univ. of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France
Michael Trick, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Pascal van Hentenryck, Brown University, USA
Mark Wallace, Monash University, Australia
Weixiong Zhang, Washington University, USA


PUBLICITY CO-CHAIRS

Petr Vilím, Charles University, Czech Republic
Willem Jan van Hoeve, CWI, The Netherlands


SPONSORSHIP CO-CHAIRS

Ondrej Cepek, Charles University, Czech Republic
Michel Rueher, Univ. of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France


LOCAL ARRANGEMENTS

Ondrej Cepek, Charles University, Czech Republic


ORGANIZED BY

Charles University, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics
Prague, Czech Republic



CONFERENCE VENUE

The conference will take place in the historical city centre of Prague close
to the local attractions like the Charles Bridges and the Prague Castle.