CP 2016 - The 22nd International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming

The International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming will take place in Toulouse, France, from September 5th to September 9th 2016.
This is the 22nd edition of the annual conference on all aspects of computing with constraints, including: theory, algorithms, environments, languages, models, systems, and applications such as decision making, resource allocation, scheduling, configuration, and planning.
The Association for Constraint Programming has a list of previous conferences in this series.
The CP 2016 programme will include presentations of high quality scientific research papers and applications of constraints technology. A number of invited talks will also be presented that will describe important topics relevant to the field. As well as the usual workshop, tutorial and doctoral programmes, we will repeat the published paper track in which important results that have recently appeared in journals or sister conferences will be presented, the journal publication fast track for outstanding submissions, and the industry outreach programme.
To encourage authors and delegate to participate, the CP 2016 conference will features new tracks in addition to the technical track and the application track. Each track has a specific sub-committee to make sure that competent reviewers will review the papers submitted by people of these domains. We introduce also to this conference a challenge based on a realistic industrial grade optimization problem.
Technical Track
We solicit papers that report on significant, original, and previously unpublished research on all aspects of computing with constraints. Full paper submissions are limited to 15 LNCS pages plus references while short paper submissions are limited to 8 LNCS pages plus references. Short papers will be reviewed to the same standards of quality as full papers but are not expected to contain as much original material. Short papers will have the same status as long papers and be eligible for the best paper prize.
Testing and Verification track
(Chairs: Andreas Podelski, University of Freiburg Germany; Arnaud Gotlieb, Simula Research Laboratory, Norway)
The last decade has witnessed a considerable improvement in the efficiency and expressive power of CP solvers, with a consequent impact on (software and hardware) testing and verification application. A deeper integration of solver and application is expected with on going research on Constraint Programming (CP) techniques. The Testing and Verification track of CP'2015 will focus on a broad range of topics, without being limited to the ones mentioned below:
Constraint-based hardware verification
Constraint-based software testing
Constraints in formal verification
Constraints in static and dynamic analysis
CP solvers for testing applications
Verification of CP models
Testing of CP solvers
Formal verification of CP solvers and optimizers
Automatic test generation with CP solvers
CP and Biology track
(Chairs: Agostino Dovier, University of degli Studi di Udine, Italy; Alessandro Dal Palù, University of degli Studi di Parma, Italy)
During the last years, Biology has become a source of challenging problems for the entire field of Computer Science in general, and for the areas of computational logic and constraint programming in particular. Successful approaches to these problems are likely to have significant applications in several fields of research, such as medicine, agriculture, industry, etc. Several successful applications of the Logic and Constraint Programming paradigms in Bioinformatics have been carried out in the last years, in the area of phylogenetic tree reconstruction, in haplotype inference, in proteins structure prediction, in RNA secondary structure prediction, and in System Biology, just to cite a few. Workshops on constraints and bioinformatics are organized yearly since 2005 and a special track of the ALMOB Journal on the same topic is active since 2012.
Computational Sustainability track
(Chairs: Carla Gomez, Cornell University, Ithaca, USA; Michela Milano, University of Bologna, Italy; Christine Solnon, INSA de Lyon France)
Computational Sustainability aims to apply techniques from computing and information science and related disciplines (e.g., operations research, applied mathematics, and statistics) for balancing environmental, economic, and societal needs for sustainable development. Sustainability domains and areas include:
Smart cities (e.g., sensor networks, energy efficient buildings, urban infrastructure, urban flows, traffic management, participatory and direct democracy, etc.)
Human-Built Systems and Land Use (e.g., transportation systems, datacentres, smart grid, food systems, agriculture, etc.)
Natural resources and ecosystems (e.g., climate, atmosphere, water, oceans, forest, land, soil, biodiversity, species, etc.)
Economics and Human Behavior (e.g., human well-being, poverty, infectious diseases, over-population, resource harvesting, etc.)
Energy resources (e.g., renewable energy, energy management and planning, energy market etc.)
This special track invites the submission of research papers on novel computational concepts, models, techniques, and systems to address problems in computational sustainability. Papers should describe computational sustainability research, or explain how the research addresses problems, opportunities or issues underlying computational sustainability challenges, or describe a computational sustainability challenge or application. Papers on challenges in computational sustainability are also welcome.
Preferences, social choice and optimisation
(Chairs: Toby Walsh, NICTA, Australia; Francesca Rossi, University of Padova, Italy)
Collective decision-making is an area of increasingly growing interest, driven by the increasing prevalence of systems where people connect and share information with others.
Constraint programming can have a major impact in this field. However, this will require connections being made to other research areas such as preferences, voting and game theory, multi-agent systems, machine learning, and reasoning under uncertainty.
This track welcomes papers that are concerned with topics that connect to these areas in one way or the other.
Music track
(Chair: Charlotte Truchet, University of Nantes, France)
Since its early beginning, Constraint Programming has a long history of musical applications, like automatic harmonization, rhythm generation tools, musical generation in a given style, constraint languages for music, etc. The music track welcomes articles on any kind of musical application, including (but not restricted to): music or sound generation or processing, music modelling or analysis, generation of a particular musical aspect (chords, notes, rhythms, etc.) of a musical piece, etc. On the CP side, we welcome submissions for any kind of CP techniques, whether they are used in a classical way (solving) or a less classical way (modelling languages, use of CP solving traces, auralization, etc.).
Application Track
(Chair: Laurent Michel, University of Connecticut, USA)
CP 2016 solicits papers promoting applications based on CP technologies. We especially look for industrial and academic users of constraint technology to submit papers on completed or on-going practical projects. Papers comparing constraint technology to other optimization techniques (e.g., MIP, SAT, local search…) with a sound empirical evaluation are equally welcome.
The ideal paper will clearly define the application, the users’ benefits, describe the efforts needed to build the application and the time frame in which it was delivered. While not strictly mandatory, novelty of the application domain or the use of CP technology by itself or within hybrids is a plus. The application track welcomes both full length (15 pages plus references) as well as short (8 pages plus reference) submissions, which will be subjected to the same strict review criteria.
Added value of CP, formatting, length, and dates for submissions are the same as for all tracks. In the best interest of a paper, a paper can be moved to another track.
Journal-publication-fast-track
(Chair: Willem-Jan van Hoeve, Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University, USA)
Outstanding submissions to the technical or application tracks will be offered the opportunity to be published exclusively through a fast-track process in the Constraints journal: following a second round of minor review they will be accepted directly in the journal by the time of the conference. Authors of these papers can opt to extend their paper from 15 to 20 pages plus references. These papers will be acknowledged through a one-page abstract in the conference proceedings and will be presented during the conference on the same ground as any other accepted submission. Fast Track Journal papers should be formatted according to the Journal Guidelines (http://www.springer.com/computer/ai/journal/10601).
Authors who decline to fast track their submission revert to a standard conference submission and are subject to the default formatting, length and date requirements. Papers that do not clear the second round of review also revert to standard conference paper status.
Published Journal and sister conference Paper Track
(Chair: Michela Milano, University of Bologna, Italy)
The goal of this track is to provide a forum to discuss important results in the area of constraint programming, including those at the interface of another area (scientific, industrial, artistic…), that appeared or were accepted recently (in the last two years) in relevant journals. Authors of accepted papers will be invited to give an oral presentation at the conference and to provide a one-page abstract citing their journal paper for the conference proceedings.
ACP Challenge
(Chair: Pierre Schaus, UC Louvain, Belgium)
CP 2016 organizes a challenge based on a realistic industrial grade optimization problem proposed by n-Side (www.n-side.com) and Arcellor Mittal, called The “Torpedo Scheduling Problem”. This problem is a simplification, while still being challenging, of a real life application for steel production.
The challenge will focus primarily on the quality of the solution. We will provide an instance generator and a solution checker such that each participant can develop and test their own program. Some instances will be available on the challenge web-site from the beginning. The final instances used to rank the participants will only be made public one month before the deadline