Graduate Seminar: Dr. Brahim Hnich, “Confidence-based Reasoning in Stochastic Constraint Programming”, 5 December 2014
Yasar University
Industrial Engineering Graduate Seminar Series
“ Confidence-based Reasoning in Stochastic Constraint Programming”
Dr. Brahim Hnich
Department of Computer Engineering
Izmir University of Economics
Abstract:
In this work we introduce a novel approach, based on sampling, for finding assignments that are likely to be solutions to stochastic constraint satisfaction problems and constraint optimisation problems. Our approach reduces the size of the original problem being analysed; by solving this reduced problem, with a given confidence probability, we obtain assignments that satisfy the chance constraints in the original model within prescribed error tolerance thresholds. To achieve this, we blend concepts from stochastic constraint programming and statistics. We discuss both exact and approximate variants of our method. The framework we introduce can be immediately employed in concert with existing approaches for solving stochastic constraint programs. A thorough computational study on a number of stochastic combinatorial optimisation problems demonstrates the effectiveness of our approach.
Bio:
Brahim Hnich is a Professor of Computer Science at the department of Computer Engineering at Izmir University of Economics. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from Bilkent University (1997, Turkey), a PhD in Computer Science from Uppsala University (2003, Sweden), as well as a HDR in Computer Science from Montepellier II University (2008, France). After, his doctoral studies, He worked as Research Fellow at the Cork Constraint Computation Center (Ireland). He obtained his Docentship in 2004 from Uppsala University.
He is an associate editor of the Artificial Intelligence Journal and the coauthor of more than 44 journal papers covered by Science Citation Index. Two of his research papers have been selected among the best papers at the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in 2004 and at the International Joint Conference on AI in 2005.
His research interests include, among others, (stochastic) constraint programming, global constraints, and symmetry in combinatorial problems.
Date: 5 December 2014, Friday
Venue: Selcuk Yasar Campus, Y317
Time: 11:00