Artificial Intelligence Group

Alan Frisch

Position: Reader in Intelligent Systems and Head of the Artificial Intelligence Group

Research and Publications

My current research is mostly focuses on the solution of constraint satisfaction problems, especially the systematic and automatic generation and transformation of problem formulations.

Over the years I have conducted a wide range of research on the principles of knowledge representation and reasoning with particular interest in applying the results to problems in planning, natural language processing, logic programming, knowledge retrieval, inductive logic programming, probabilistic reasoning, search and spatio-temporal reasoning.

Further information on my research, including publications:

My research on constraint programming and SAT.
Some of my publications (and those of other members of the Artificial Intelligence Group).
I was the principal investigator for an EPSRC-funded project (L31104) entitled Development of an Inductive Proof Assistant for Z Integrating Classical and Rewrite Strategies. It ran from January 1997 through April 2000.
Many of the student projects that I have supervised are related to my research.

Teaching

At the University of York I have taught the following seven lecture courses, the first two of which I currently teach

COP: Constraint Programming.
LPA: Logic Programming and Artificial Intelligence (for undergrads)
ToC: Theory of Computing,
IAI: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence,
LAI: Logic Programming and Artificial Intelligence (for MSc conversion students),
ALP: Advanced Logic Programming
CSO: Constraint Satisfaction and Combinatorial Optimization

I also conduct tutorials and supervise student projects. My project students have frequently won awards for their work.

Material useful for my teaching activities can be found on my Teaching Resources Page.

External Activities

Special Issue: Ian Miguel and I are co-editing a special issue of Constraints journal on Abstraction and Automation in Constraint Modelling. We are hoping to have it published in April 2008.

Modelling Workshop: In 2002 I founded the annual International Workshop on Reformulating Constraint Satisfaction Problems: Towards Systematisation and Automation (now called the International Workshop on Constraint Modelling and Reformulation). I served as workshop chair in 2002 and 2003, as joint chair in 2004, and as programme committee member in all other years.

ILP-2000: James Cussens and I were Chairs of ILP-2000, the Tenth International Conference on Inductive Logic Programming. This led us to edit a Special Issue on Inductive Logic Programming for the Journal of Machine Learning Research.

Workshops/Conferences: I have been the program chair for six workshops--including two on hybrid reasoning--and served a Tutorial and Workshop chair of CP 2005. I have served on the program committees of many conferences, including AAAI, IJCAI, ECAI, CP, KR, CADE, ILP, LPAR, AI and ICIS.

Workshop on Automated Reasoning: In 1993 I founded the workshop series entitled "Workshop on Automated Reasoning: Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice". and then served as Chair of the Organizing Committee until 2004.

SIGART Vice-Chair: Twice elected Vice-Chair of SIGART, the ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence. I held this office from 1991 to 1995 during which international membership exceeded 7000.

Peer Review College: Twice elected as a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College.

External Examining: I have held five appointments as External Examiner for taught degree programmes in artificial intelligence and computer science.

Computer Science Department Activities

(Some of the following links are available only within the Department.)

I currently chair the Departmental Research Committee and am a member of the University's Senate.

Previous activities inclued:

Running the Departmental Seminar Series. and the Artificial Intelligence Interest Group Seminar Series.
Serving for over 14 years as the Department's International Exchange Coordinator..
Handling the applications for admission of visiting students.
Serving on the Departmental Computer User Committee, the Departmental Graduate Studies Committee and Departmental Research Committee.
For many years I was responsible for publicising the Department's graduate courses. Among the wads of material I wrote or edited are:
- The Department's Graduate Studies Web Pages.
- A collection of flyers describing the research activities of the Department.
- The Department's entry in the University of York Graduate Prospectus.
- "Research Topics for Graduate Students", a catalog of potential research topics for new research students. It is available in gzipped postscript and in HTML.
- Instructions for staff contributing entries to "Research Topics for Graduate Students".
- A mailing list of addresses to which our publicity material is sent.

Biographical Sketch

I am a Reader in Intelligent Systems and Head of the Artificial Intelligence Group in the Department of Computer Science at the University of York, where I have worked since 1993. Prior to that I was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and a Lecturer in the Cognitive Studies Programme at the University of Sussex. I have been a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics (Saarbruecken, Germany), the University of Leeds, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, AT&T Bell Laboratories (Murray Hill, NJ, USA) and the Meme Media Laboratory (Hokkaido University, Japan).

I hold a BS in Mathematics from Carnegie-Mellon University, and an MS and PhD in Computer Science from the University of Rochester. My PhD thesis, entitled "Knowledge Retrieval as Specialized Inference", was supervised by James Allen.

===== Graduate Students Wanted =====

Artificial Intelligence Group
Department of Computer Science
University of York
York YO10 5DD, U.K.
Tel: +44 1904 432745, Fax: +44 1904 432767

Email: frisch@cs.york.ac.uk

WWW: http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/~frisch