Third Scottish Constraints Meeting

Friday 2nd June, 2000
Department of Computing Science
University of Aberdeen
(report on the meeting)

This is the third in the series of meetings in Scotland of researchers and practitioners interested in constraints, funded by the UK Constraints Network (ConsNet), which in turn is funded by EPSRC. The meetings are informal, and the intention is to discuss ideas, present ongoing research, examine industrial problems, and ask questions. There is a mix of long talks and short talks, with plenty of time for discussion. We are particularly keen to involve people from industry who have problems which may be amenable to constraint methods. The first meeting was held in St. Andrews, and the second in Edinburgh.

Call for participation

Are you interested in presenting some research on constraints? Would you like to discuss an application problem? If so, we would like to hear from you. We are interested in any contribution, from reports on finished research to tentative descriptions of problems. Please contact Ken Brown for more details.

Provisional Programme

An OHP, laptop and data projecter will be available. Longer talks should last for approximately 20 minutes, with 10 minutes for questions and discussion. Shorter talks are intended to summarise existing research, or present work in progress, and should last for 10 minutes, with 5 minutes for questions. The idea in all cases is to generate discussion, and speakers should at least indicate future plans.

The final session is intended to focus on the future. Everybody who is not otherwise giving a talk is requested to prepare a single slide for this session describing ongoing work, future plans, open problems or opportunities for collaboration. The aim is to get a snapshot of current Scottish research in constraints.

11:00 - 11:15	Welcome & coffee
11:15 - 11:45	Josh Singer: Local Search on Random 2+p-SAT
11:45 - 12:15	Ken Brown: Leaving variables unassigned in CSPs
12:15 - 12:30	Mark Winter: Knowledge refinement in constructing CSPs
12:30 - 1:45	Lunch: King's College Visitor Centre
1:45 - 2:15	Peter Ross: Combining heuristics by evolutionary methods to solve constraint problems
2:15 - 2:30	Nick Gotts: Constraints in spatial reasoning
2:30 - 2:45	Martin Swain: Protein sidechain placement using CLP
2:45 - 3:00	Coffee & discussion
3:00 - 3:15	Alun Preece: Constraints in E-commerce
3:15 - 4:00	Future Prospects: research, applications, collaboration

Attendees

The people below have indicated that they will be attending. We need to know numbers to organise lunch: if you are not on this list, but want to attend, or you are on the list but will not be coming, please contact Ken Brown.

Nicos Angelopolous, Aberdeen University
Ines Arana, Robert Gordon University
Ken Brown, University of Aberdeen
Stuart Chalmers, University of Aberdeen
David Fowler, University of Aberdeen
Ian Gent, University of St. Andrews
Nick Gotts, Macaulay Land Use Research Institute
Tim Norman, Aberdeen Unviersity
Alun Preece, University of Aberdeen
Patrick Prosser, University of Glasgow
Peter Ross, University of Edinburgh
Cristiano Saturni, University of Aberdeen
Josh Singer, University of Edinburgh
Martin Swain, University of Aberdeen
Toby Walsh, University of York
Mark Winter, Macaulay Land Use Research Institute

Location

The meeting will be held in Lecture room 5, Meston Building, King's College Campus. The Meston Building is No. 16 on the campus map. If you enter the building from the south entrance, lecture room 5 is through the glass swing doors on the right. If you come in the north entrance, cross the foyer, go through two sets of swing doors, go down the stairs on your left, turn left, through two sets of doors, and down into the south foyer. LR5 is then through glass swing doors on your left.

Travel directions can be found by following links from the travel page. If you are arriving by train, the University is about a 25 minute walk; alternatively, you can walk up to Union street, and then take buses 1,2,3,4,7 or 15. The bus will drop you near the junction of King Street and Regent Walk. If you are arriving by car, there is unrestricted parking on Bedford Road and in a student car park off Bedford Road, just south of the University library (building 20 on the campus map. ).