Call for Papers & Call for Participation

SymCon'03:
The Third International Workshop
on Symmetry in Constraint Satisfaction Problems

CP 2003 Workshop
Monday 29 September 2003
Kinsale, County Cork, Ireland

Many constraint satisfaction problems have some symmetry: any assignment can be transformed into a set of symmetrically equivalent assignments. The symmetries preserve solutions: if any assignment in a symmetry equivalent class is consistent with the constraints, they all are. For instance, in many CSPs some of the variables refer to entities which are indistinguishable, and the values assigned to these variables can be interchanged in any solution. Where symmetry exists in a CSP, dealing with it effectively is often critical to the success of solving the CSP. Unless this is done, search often thrashes, revisiting symmetrically equivalent states over and over again.

The SymCon'03 workshop will provide a forum for research into any aspect of symmetry in constraint satisfaction problems, including:

• symmetry detection
• exploitation of symmetry e.g. heuristics which use symmetry information
• elimination of symmetry e.g. remodelling the problem to reduce symmetry
• avoidance of symmetry e.g. algorithms which avoid considering assignments symmetric to any assignment already considered
• exploitation of mathematical techniques such as group theory for dealing with symmetry in CSPs
• applications of constraint programming to problems with symmetry.

SymCon'03 will be the third workshop in the series, following the successful earlier workshops SymCon'01 at CP 2001 in Paphos, Cyprus and SymCon'02 at CP 2002 in Ithaca, NY, USA. It will be a half-day workshop: SymCon'03 and the Modelling & Reformulation Workshop will be timetabled consecutively to allow attendance at both.

Steve Linton (University of St Andrews) will give an invited talk at the Workshop. Steve leads the international consortium developing GAP (Groups, Algorithms, Programs), a system used in particular for computational group theory. He will talk on the links between group theory, symmetry and constraint programming.

Submission Process

Submitted papers should be emailed as PS or PDF files, to the Programme Chairs by Wednesday 23 July 2003.

At least one author of each presented submission must attend the workshop. All workshop attendees must pay the CP 2003 workshop registration fee; attendance is otherwise open.

Important Dates

Programme Committee Chairs

• Barbara Smith
  School of Computing & Engineering, University of Huddersfield,
  Queensgate, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire HD3 3AF, U.K.
  Phone: +44 1484 472147 Fax: +44 1484 421106
• Ian Gent
  School of Computer Science, University of St. Andrews,
  North Haugh, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9SS, U.K.
  Phone: +44 1334 46 3247
  Fax: +44 1334 46 3278
• Warwick Harvey
  IC-PARC, William Penney Laboratory, Imperial College London, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ, U.K.
  Phone: +44 20 7594 8425
  Fax: +44 20 7594 8432

Programme Committee Members

• Pascal Brisset, ENAC, Toulouse, France
• Pierre Flener, Uppsala University, Sweden
• Alan Frisch, University of York, U.K.
• Ian Gent, University of St. Andrews, U.K.
  
• Warwick Harvey, IC-PARC, Imperial College London, U.K.
  
• Igor Markov, University of Michigan, U.S.A.
• Justin Pearson, Uppsala University, Sweden
• Jean-Francois Puget, ILOG
  
• Barbara M. Smith, University of Huddersfield, U.K.