Constraint Programming (CP) is a framework for declarative description and solving of hard combinatorial problems: the user states the constraints over the problem variables and the system finds a valuation of the variables satisfying the constraints. CP is a two-level architecture that allows the study of computational systems based on constraints. At the first level (the constraint part), the set of constraints of the problem is declaratively specified, while describing how to search for a solution is the concern of the second level (the search part). CP languages rely on complex constraint-solving algorithms (or: propagation algorithms) that are employed by specifying a set of constraints, and provide non-deterministic constructs to describe the search. Since constraints arise naturally in many problems, these problems can be declaratively expressed as the constraint part of constraint programs. This talk will introduce CP and present a number of successful applications. the talk will put a special emphasis on the application of CP in Stochastic Inventory Control.

Bio:Assoc. Prof. Dr. Brahim Hnich's primary area of research is in Constraint Programming a subfield of Artificial Intelligence (AI). He holds a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering (1997) from Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. In January 2003, he received his PhD from Uppsala University under the supervision of Prof. A . Hamfelt (Sweden) and Prof. T. Walsh (UK). His PhD thesis was nominated for the European Coordinating Committee of AI best theses award. He worked as a Research Fellow at the Cork Constraint Computation Centre of University College Cork, Ireland. He is also a Docent at the Department of İnformation Sciences of Uppsala University, Sweden. Currently, he is an Associate Professor and head of Department of Computer Enginering at the Faculty of Computer Sciences of İzmir University of Economics