WATT Digest 2003, Issue 1 Date Issued : 1st Jan 2003 =============================================================== WATT Digest appears every 3 months and is automatically sent to all members of WATT. Send submissions/articles to Gareth Beddoe at grb@cs.nott.ac.uk Back issues of WATT digest can be viewed at http://www.asap.cs.nott.ac.uk/watt/index.html If you wish to subscribe/unsubscribe to WATT you should EMAIL Limin Han at The University of Nottingham. Limin's EMAIL address is lxh@cs.nott.ac.uk The WATT website can be found at http://www.asap.cs.nott.ac.uk/ASAP/watt/index.html The next issue (vol 3 : Iss 2) is due 1st April 2003. WATT Digest is edited by: Gareth Beddoe Automated Scheduling Optimisation and Planning Research Group School Of Computer Science and Information Technology University of Nottingham, Jubilee Campus Nottingham NG8 1BB United Kingdom Tel : +44 (0) 115 846 6525 http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~grb ============================================================= In this issue (#2003-01) 1. New Editor for WATT Digest 2. WATT EMAIL Groups 3. The 1st MISTA Conference 4. Special Issue of the Journal of Scheduling 5. Optimization Tutorials 6. GECCO Co-evolution track 7. GECCO CFP for routing and Scheduling 8. EURO WATT Workshop 2003 9. EJOR Special Issue on Timetabling 10. Timetabling Bibliography 11. Problem Datasets 12. Timetabling Resources 13. Conferences of Interest to the Timetabling Community === 1. New Editor for WATT Digest ============================= I am taking over from Graham Kendall as editor of the WATT Digest for the 2003 volume. Submissions, articles and suggestions for content should now be sent to my EMAIL grb@cs.nott.ac.uk. I would like to encourage anyone with new ideas for the content of this digest to get in touch. Please let me have anything that you think may be of interest to the timetabling community. Some examples are: -Titles and abstracts of good, recent papers you have come across -Upcoming conferences and workshops -Reviews of papers/books -Details about software packages -Recently published thesis Timetabling problems that you are working on (and maybe could use some help with) -Links to relevant datasets -Questions that you would like to ask the community If you know of anyone who might be interested in joining the WATT community then point them to the WATT website at http://www.asap.cs.nott.ac.uk/watt/. I wish you all a happy and successful 2003. Regards Gareth Beddoe 2. WATT EMAIL Groups ==================== To make an announcement, please send an email to this e-mail list. The e-mail will be forwarded to watt@cs.nott.ac.uk automatically. The e-mail list watt@cs.nott.ac.uk will continue to be used as a discussion group. If anybody wants to contribute, please send email only to watt@cs.nott.ac.uk. Members who do not want to be involved in discussions should send an e-mail to Limin Han (lxh@cs.nott.ac.uk). She will remove you from watt and add you to watt-announcement. 3. MISTA CFP ============ The 1st Multidisciplinary International Conference on Scheduling: Theory and Applications (MISTA) Wednesday 13th to Saturday 16th August 2003, hosted by The University of Nottingham, UK. This conference is the first in a series of conferences that serve as a forum for an international community of researchers, practitioners and vendors on all aspects of multi-disciplinary scheduling. The conference will cover, but not be limited to, the following disciplines: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Engineering, Management, Manufacturing, Mathematics and Operational Research. The aim is to bring together scheduling researchers and practitioners from all the disciplines that engage with scheduling research. The scope of the conference includes (but is not limited to): * Commercial Packages * Automated Reasoning * Timetabling * Constraint Logic Programming * Evolutionary Algorithms * Rostering * Knowledge-Based Systems * Heuristic Search * Real-Time Scheduling * Local Search * Shop-Floor Scheduling * Multi-processor Scheduling * Transport Scheduling * Process Scheduling * Complexity of Scheduling Problems * Rule-Based Expert Systems * Real World Scheduling * Sports Scheduling * Production Scheduling * Vehicle Routing * Machine Scheduling * Meta-heuristic Search * Batch Scheduling * Theoretical Scheduling * Applications * Delivery Scheduling Submitting to MISTA ------------------- Authors are invited to submit papers in one of two categories: (a) Full Papers: Authors should submit papers describing significant, original and unpublished work. Six (hard) copies of the paper should be submitted by January 24th 2003 to the address below. Accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings. The authors of accepted papers will have the opportunity to submit their papers to a second round of refereeing so that their papers can be considered fora post-conference volume to be published by Kluwer. This can either be the same paper as was submitted to the conference oran updated version in the light of comments received or new work undertaken. Papers should be formatted following the guidelines given on the website (not available at the time this document went to press). (b) Abstracts : Authors can submit abstracts of up to 2 pages (formatted in the same way as for the full papers) to the address below. Six (hard) copies of the abstract should be submitted by January 24th 2003. Abstracts will be fully refereed. The abstracts will not go forward to the second round of refereeing for the post-conference volume. However, authors of accepted abstracts will have the opportunity to write a paper (based on their abstract) and submit it for the selected papers volume at a later date (shortly after the conference). People who wish to give a talk (e.g. practitioners, researchers with incomplete work) but do not want to write an academic paper can submit under this category. Accepted abstracts will be published in the conference proceedings. All submissions should include a cover page which clearly states: * The title of the paper * Names, affiliations and EMAIL addresses of the authors * Who is the corresponding author * Keywords (chosen from the above list, where possible) * The category of submission (full paper or abstract) Submit To: Alison Payne (MISTA) Automated Scheduling and Planning Research Group School of Computer Science and Information Technology Jubilee Campus, Wollaton Road, Nottingham NG8 1BB. United Kingdom Important Dates: Deadline for Paper Submission : 24th January 2003 Referees Comments Returned to Authors : 30th April 2003 Camera Ready Deadline : 30th June 2003 Early Registration Deadline : 30th June 2003 Conference : Tuesday 13th - Saturday 16th August 2003 Conference Web Page ------------------- For latest/more information see: http://www.mistaconference.org International Advisory Committee -------------------------------- * Graham Kendall (Chair), The University of Nottingham, UK * Abdelhakim Artiba, Facultes Universitares Catholiques de Mons (CREGI - FUCAM), Belguim * Jacek Blazewicz, Institute of Computing Science, Poznan University of Technology, Poland * Peter Brucker, University of Osnabrueck, Germany * Edmund Burke, The University of Nottingham, UK * Xiaoqiang Cai, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong * Ed Coffman, Columbia University, USA * Moshe Dror, The University of Arizona, USA * David Fogel, Natural Selection Inc., USA * Fred Glover, Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado, USA * Bernard Grabot, Laboratoire Gnie de Production - Equipe Production Automatise, France * Claude Le Pape, ILOG, France * Toshihide Ibaraki, Kyoto University, Japan * Mike Pinedo, New York University, USA * Ibrahim Osman, American University of Beirut, Lebanon * Jean-Yves Potvin, Universit de Montreal, Canada * Michael Trick,Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon University, USA * Stephen Smith, Carnegie Mellon University, USA * Steef van de Velde, Erasmus University, Netherlands * George White, University of Ottawa, Canada Program Committee ----------------- - Uwe Aickelin, The University of Bradford, UK - Hesham Alfares, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Saudi Arabia - Abdelhakim Artiba, Facultes Universitares Catholiques de Mons (CREGI - FUCAM), Belguim - Belarmino Adenso-Diaz, University of Oviedo, Spain - Philippe Baptise, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, USA - James Bean, Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering, University of Michigan, USA - Michael Bender, SUNY Stony Brook, USA - Jacek Blazewicz, Institute of Computing Science, Poznan University of Technology, Poland - Joachim Breit, Saarland University, Germany - Peter Brucker, University of Osnabrueck, Germany - Edmund Burke, The University of Nottingham, UK - Xiaoqiang Cai, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong - Jacques Carlier, Compigne cedex France - Edwin Cheng, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong - Philippe Chretienne, Paris 6 University, France - Ed Coffman, Columbia University, USA - Peter Cowling, The University of Bradford, UK - Patrick De Causmaecker, KaHo St.-Lieven, Ghent, Belgium - Mauro Dell'Amico, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy - Erik Demeulemeester, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium - Kath Dowsland, Gower Optimal Algorithms Ltd., UK - Andreas Drexl, University of Kiel, Germany - Moshe Dror, University of Arizona, USA - Maciej Drozdowski, Poznan University of Technology, Poland - Janet Efstathiou, University of Oxford, UK - Wilhelm Erben, FH Konstanz - University of Applied Sciences, Germany - Dror Feitelson, The Hebrew University, Israel - Gerd Finke, Laboratory LEIBNIZ-IMAG, Grenoble, France - Peter Fleming, University of Sheffield, UK - David Fogel, Natural Selection, USA - Dalibor Froncek, University of Minnesota, USA - Michel Gendreau, Universit de Montral, Canada - Celia A. Glass, Department of Actuarial Sciences and Statistics, City University, UK - Fred Glover, Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado, USA - Bernard Grabot, Laboratoire Gnie de Production - Equipe Production Automatise, France - Alain Guinet, Industrial Engineering Department, INSA de Lyon, France - Jin-Kao Hao, University of Angers, France - Martin Henz, National University of Singapore, Singapore - Jeffrey Herrmann, University of Maryland, USA - Willy Herroelen, Department of Applied Economics, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium - Han Hoogeveen, Utrecht University, The Netherlands - Toshihide Ibaraki, Kyoto University, Japan - Graham Kendall, The University of Nottingham, UK - Jeffrey Kingston, University of Sydney, Australia - Hiroshi Kise, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Japan - Wieslaw Kubiak, Mon, Canada - Mitsuru Kuroda, Professor, Engineering, Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan - Raymond Kwan, University of Leeds, UK - Claude Le Pape, ILOG, France - Chung-Yee Lee, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong - Eugene Levner, Holon Institute of Technology, Israel - Arne Lkketangen, Dept. of Informatics, Molde College, Norway - Dirk C. Mattfeld, University of Bremen, Germany - David Montana, BBN Technologies, USA - Martin Middendorf, Catholic University of Eichsttt-Ingolstadt, Germany - Alix Munier, LIP6, university Paris 12, France - Alexander Nareyek, Carnegie Mellon University, USA - Klaus Neumann, University of Karlsruhe, Germany - Bryan A. Norman, University of Pittsburgh, USA - Wim Nuijten, ILOG, France - Ibrahim Osman, American University of Beirut, Lebanon - Costas P.Pappis, University of Piraeus, Greece - Erwin Pesch, University of Siegen, Germany - Dobrilla Petrovic, Coventry University, UK - Sanja Petrovic, The University of Nottingham, UK - Mike Pinedo, New York University, USA - Chris Potts, University of Southampton, UK - Christian Prins, University of Technology, Troyes, France - Jean-Yves Potvin, Universit de Montreal, Canada - Kirk Pruhs, University of Pittsburgh, USA - Vic J. Rayward-Smith, University of East Anglia, UK - Colin Reeves, Coventry University, UK - Celso C. Ribeiro, Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - Andrea Schaerf, University of Udine, Italy - Guenter Schmidt, Saarland University, Germany - Wolfgang Slany, Technische Universitaet Wien, Austria - Roman Slowinski, Poznan University of Technology, Poland - Stephen Smith, Carnegie Mellon University, USA - Vincent T'Kindt, University of Tours, France - Roberto Tadei, Politecnico di Torino, Italy - Jonathan Thompson, Cardiff University, UK - Michael Trick,Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon University, USA - Edward Tsang, University of Essex, UK - Denis Trystram, ID - IMAG, France - Steef van de Velde, Erasmus University, Netherlands - Greet Vanden Berghe, KaHo St.-Lieven, Ghent, Belgium - Stefan Voss, University of Hamburg, Germany - Jan Weglarz, Poznan University of Technology, Poland - Dominique de Werra, IMA, Facult des Sciences de Base, Lausanne, Switzerland - George White, University of Ottawa, Canada - Darrell Whitley, Colorado State University, USA - Gerhard J Woeginger, Faculty of Mathematical Sciences, University of Twente, The Netherlands - Yakov Zinder, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia 4. Special Issue of the Journal of Scheduling ============================================= Call for Papers: Special Issue of Journal of Scheduling on "Expert Systems and Machine Learning in Scheduling" Guest Editor: Sanja Petrovic In recent years there has been an increased interest in the application of expert system methodology to solving complex planning and scheduling problems. This technology provides an appropriate way to build systems that can make use of the knowledge and experience of scheduling experts. A number of promising research areas have become apparent. Particular examples include scheduling systems which are able to learn and adapt to new situations, systems which can handle uncertain knowledge and incomplete information, etc. A special issue of the Journal of Scheduling will be devoted to expert systems and machine learning technology across a variety of scheduling and scheduling-related problems and domains. Topics covered in the special issue may include, but are not restricted to, machine learning and expert system approaches to: * dynamic scheduling environments * repair problems * evaluation of schedules * planning and scheduling of large size problems * distributed planning and scheduling Potential papers could cover a variety of expert systems/machine learning research areas including: * case based reasoning * neural networks * fuzzy logic * artificial immune systems * constraint-based scheduling Potential authors are invited to submit manuscripts on both theoretical and applied research dealing with a wide range of issues on expert systems and machine learning in scheduling. Refereeing and the selection of papers will be carried out according to the normal standards of the Journal of Scheduling. Manuscripts can be submitted either via e-mail or by sending 4 hard-copies to the address indicated below. All submissions should include a title page containing title, contact author, author(s) names and affiliations, regular postal addresses, and e-mail addresses. Sanja Petrovic Guest Editor, Journal of Scheduling University of Nottingham School of Computer Science and IT Automated Scheduling, Planning and Optimisation Group Jubilee Campus, Wollaton Road Nottingham, NG8 1BB UK Email sxp@cs.nott.ac.uk Dates and information: Deadline for submissions: January 31, 2003 Notification of decision: July 1, 2003 Final versions due: December 1, 2003 Special issue will appear: 2004 Detailed instructions for authors can be found on the Notes for Contributors page of any issues of the journal or on the Web page on "Journal of Scheduling": http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jpages/1094-6136/ 5. Introductory Tutorials in Opimization and Search Methodologies (INTROS'03) ============================================================================= On Tuesday 12th August 2003, just before the MISTA conference, there is a tutorial day that will allow leading reseachers to present some of the modern optimization techniques that are being used today. We expect each tutorial to last about 2 hours. The tutorials are being aimed at a level applicable to students in the first year of their PhD and, as such, will be applicable to many people including those from industry, researchers who do not work in this field but who wish to find out more about these techniques, as well as those working in the field who, perhaps, need a refresher. We are still in the planning stages but we expect the day to be split into a number of streams but there will be a publication (Kluwer) which will cover all the tutorials that are given. Places will be limited, so early booking is essential. If you would like to be placed on a mailing list, for when the we have more details about the event, please send an EMAIL to Graham Kendall, who will keep in touch with you. People who register early will be given the option to book first (before the main event is open to general registration). The confirmed speakers/authors so far are 1. Emile Aarts : Simulated Annealing 2. Dipankar Dasgupta : Artificial Immune Systems 3. Kalyanmoy Deb : Multi-objective Optimization 4. Eugene Freuder & Mark Wallace* : Constraint Reasoning 5. Michel Gendreau : Tabu Search 6. David Goldberg : Genetic Algorithms 7. Pierre Hansen : Variable Neighborhood Search 8. John Koza & Riccardo Poli : Genetic Programming 9. Roman Slowinski : Rough Sets 10. Mike Trick : Integer Programming 11. Darrell Whitley : Complexity Theory and The No Free Lunch Theorem 12. Xin Yao : Machine Learning See http://www.mistaconference.org/2003/tutorials/index.html for more information 6. GECCO Co-Evolution CFP ========================= CALL FOR PAPERS Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference 2003 (GECCO-2003) Coevolution Track see http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gxk/gecco/2003/ for a copy of this call A recombination of the 8th Annual Genetic Programming Conference (GP-2003) and the 12th International Conference on Genetic Algorithms (ICGA-2003) Saturday 12th July 9 to Wednesday 16th July, 2003 Chicago, Illinois, USA http://gal4.ge.uiuc.edu:8080/GECCO-2003/ The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2003) will present the latest high-quality results in the growing field of genetic and evolutionary computation. GECCO-2003 continues the tradition of bringing together researchers from the entire spectrum of research in genetic and evolutionary computation, including genetic algorithms; classifier systems; genetic programming; evolvable hardware; DNA and molecular computing; evolutionary strategies; evolutionary programming; evolutionary scheduling and routing; artificial life, adaptive behavior, agents, and ant colony optimization; as well as real-world applications of all of these areas. The Coevolution Track welcomes papers that include (but are not limited) to the following themes: - Artificial Life - Economics - Game Playing - Game Theory - Negotiation - Neural Networks - Optimization - Robotics - Scheduling - Time Series Prediction Submissions The deadline for submission is the Wednesday, 22nd January 2003. Please note, this is a HARD deadline. See the GECCO web site for how to submit a paper (http://gal4.ge.uiuc.edu:8080/GECCO-2003/submitting.html). The papers should be submitted following the normal conference procedures, making sure that the papers are marked for the coevolution track. 7. GECCO CFP for routing and Scheduling ======================================= Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference GECCO-2003 Special Track on Evolutionary Scheduling and Routing CALL FOR PAPERS July 12-16, 2003 (Saturday-Wednesday) Chicago, IL USA http://www.isgec.org/GECCO-2003 Submission deadline: January 22, 2003. The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO- 2003) will present the latest high-quality results in the growing field of genetic and evolutionary computation. GECCO-2003 continues the tradition of bringing together researchers from the entire spectrum of research in genetic and evolutionary computation, including genetic algorithms;classifier systems; genetic programming; evolvable hardware;DNA and molecular computing; evolutionary strategies; evolutionary programming; evolutionary scheduling; artificial life, adaptive behavior, agents, and ant colony optimization; as well as real-world applications of all of these areas. The "Evolutionary Scheduling and Routing" Special Track welcomes papers that include (but are not limited) to the following themes: * Scheduling Problems in Theory and Practice. * Vehicle Routing. * Meta-heuristic Approaches to Scheduling and Routing Problems * Travelling Salesman and Related Problems Full conference and submission details can be obtained from the above hyperlink. 8. EURO WATT Workshop 2003 ========================== 5th Workshop of the EURO Working Group on Automated Timetabling (WATT) The 5th WATT Workshop will be held at the EURO / INFORMS Joint International Conference in Istanbul, Turkey, on July 6-10, 2003. Details of the EURO Conference can be seen on the Web page: http://www.istanbul2003.org/main.html As in the past, the workshop will be organised as a special session (or sessions) at the conference. The session will consist of a number of talks dealing with various issues on automated timetabling research/work. To give a talk you should submit an abstract, not longer then 1400 characters, by January 15, 2003 following the instructions given on the Web site. When submitting your abstract, you will be asked for a cluster chair code, the appropriate code for WATT submissions is 105/1. Accepted abstracts will be published in a Conference proceeding. Each speaker has to register and pay the registration fee. The deadline for invited paper submission is extended to March 15, 2003. Early registration deadline is also extended, to May 1st, 2003. Please E-Mail me ASAP if you plan to submit an abstract. My E-Mail address is ThompsonJM1@cardiff.ac.uk I look forward to seeing you in Istanbul. Dr Jonathan Thompson Maths Institute, Cardiff University Tel: 029-20875524 Fax: 029-20874199 9. EJOR Special Issue on Timetabling ==================================== The EJOR Special Issue on Timetabling will appear in 2003. For more information see: http://www.elsevier.com/inca/publications/store/5/0/5/5/4/3/index.htt 10. Timetabling Bibliography =========================== The WATT pages contain a comprehensive bibliography up to 1995 (see http://www.asap.cs.nott.ac.uk/watt/resources/bibliography.html) We are currently working on updating this resource to include ALL timetabling papers from the 1995 to date. We would like you to tell us about ANY timetabling papers you know from 1995. However please note that we are If you know of any timetabling papers please EMAIL them to Limin Han (lxh@cs.nott.ac.uk) at The University of Nottingham, UK 11. Problem Datasets ==================== The WATT pages contain a small number of problem datasets (see http://www.asap.cs.nott.ac.uk/watt/resources/downloads.html) Set of 200 random examples for shift scheduling problem are availiable from http://www.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/proj/Rota/benchmarke.htm We would like to extend these datasets and we invite you to submit any datasets you have available so they can be listed on the WATT pages. We are particularly interested in datasets relating to course timetabling, examination timetabling, school timetabling and personnel timetabling. If you have any solution results we would also like to put these on WATT so that future researchers have something to compare against. Also, if you know of the references where the datasets are used, that would also be useful. Please EMAIL any information to Limin Han (lxh@cs.nott.ac.uk) at The University of Nottingham, UK 12. Timetabling Resources ========================= The WATT page at http://www.asap.cs.nott.ac.uk/watt/resources/resources.html contains a list of useful resources to timetabling researchers. Please take a few minutes to look at it and see if there is anything missing. If you would like a link added to the page, please EMAIL Dario Landa (jds@cs.nott.ac.uk) at The University of Nottingham 13. Conferences of Interest to the Timetabling Community ==================================================== Conferences of interest to timetablers can be found at the Conference Diary web site for the Journal of Scheduling. The URL is http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jpages/1094-6136/sites.html -- Gareth R. Beddoe Automated Scheduling Optimisation and Planning Research Group School of Computer Science and Information Technology, Jubilee Campus, University of Nottingham Nottingham, NG8 1BB United Kingdom http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~grb Ph. 0115 8466525 Mob. 07961 157976