The summer school is a yearly event organised by the Association for Constraint Programming (ACP). The idea behind it is to spread knowledge of constraint programming among young researchers, other disciplines and the industry. The invited speakers are renown experts in their field, and give presentations on various topics of Constraint Programming. Check out this year's preliminary schedule! The summer school is also a highly social event, with ample opportunity to have discussions with the speakers and make new connections and friends amongst the other participants.
Anyone interested in solving hard combinatorial optimisation problems. In particular, students, researchers, industry practitioners, or hobby scientists. Note that there are reduced fees for students. If you already have some experience in heuristics, mathematical programming or even constraint programming, then we think that you can benefit a lot from this summer school.
This year's topic is "Applying Constraint Programming", so the focus will be on learning about tools and technology to apply Constraint Programming for solving a hard optimisation problem. Presentations will cover model-and-solve tools, building and extending constraint solvers, decomposition and successful applications of Constraint Programming on hard real-world problems.
The summer school will include practical labs where the participants can apply what they learn during presentations. Furthermore, there will be a hackathon-style challenge during the last days of the summer school where the participants apply Constraint Programming to solve a hard optimisation problem, guided by the speakers.
This year the summer school will be held in Vienna, Austria, from July 1-5, 2019. Vienna has been repeatedly voted most livable city in the world, and its centre is an UNESCO world heritage site. The venue of the summer school is in one of Vienna's most vibrant central districts. Vienna is beautiful and very warm in July, with many out-door events, such as concerts, open-air cinemas and festivals. Many museums and the historical centre are in walking distance from the summer school venue. You can even go for a cooling swim in and around the Danube!
There will be an "Introduction to Constraint Programming" lecture at the beginning of the course, so no prior knowledge on Constraint Programming is necessary to attend the summer school. However, it is recommended that the participants have some basic knowledge of combinatorial optimisation, and ideally have some background in other optimisation approaches, such as meta-heuristics or mathematical programming.
The presentations and practical labs will be designed to appeal to participants with basic as well as strong technical/programming skills.
The early bird registration is now open until April 30, 2019. Go to the registration page to register.
Andrea Rendl and Tommaso Urli are organising the summer school. They are both former academics in the field of Constraint Programming and now work for an optimisation company in Vienna. You can reach the organisers through the email address acpsummer2019@gmail.com.