Happy New Year

So it is the start of a New Year this seems like a good time to start a Blog. My plan for this blog is that it will show exactly what an academic in computing fills there days with. I am often asked in meeting with people from the IT industry, especially those regarding the British Computer Society what being an academic is like, hopefully this will answer their questions.

At the moment it is outwith term time so I am concentrating on research so in this first post I will explain my research area which is call Constraint Programming. 

Problems often consist of choices. Making a choice that is compatible with all other choices made and optimal is difficult. Constraint Programming (CP) is the branch of Artificial Intelligence (AI), where computers help us to make these choices.

A constraint program consists of a set of variables, a set of values for each variable and a set of constraints. For example, the problem might be to to fit components (values) to circuit boards (variables), subject to the constraint that no two components can be overlapping. A solution to a CSP is an allocation of values to variables such that none of the constraints are violated. The goal of CP is to find one solution, all solutions or a good (optimal) solution to a problem. 

If you are interested in the technical details than there is a good tutorial at: http://4c.ucc.ie/web/outreach/tutorial.html which I helped to write.