Research

Research Interests

• Constraint Solving and Optimization.
• Spatio-Temporal Reasoning.
• Metaheuristics.
• Reasoning under Preferences and Uncertainty.
• Scheduling and Planning.
• Robot Motion Planning.
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
• Artificial Intelligence.

Funding

• NSERC¹ Individual Discovery Grant: 2000 - 2005, 2005 - 2010 and 2010 - 2015.
• French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mobility Program of Science and Technology.
• Viterra Professor Grant.
• Innovation and Science Fund, Saskatchewan. With Mohamed El-Darieby (Leader).
• NSERC Research Tools and Instruments(RTI) Grant. Leader. With Terence Chan and Samira Sadaoui.
• Sun Microsystems Matching Grant.
• University of Regina Start Up Fund.
• University of Regina VP Research Fund.
• Technology Enhanced Learning(TEL) Fund.
• University of Lethbridge Research Fund.
• Research Excellence Envelope, University of Lethbridge.

Awards

• Viterra Professor. University of Regina. 2008. ²
• The World Academy of Sciences Achievement Award. Las Vegas, 2002.

Invited Talks

1. Constraint-Based Temporal Reasoning. RTE 08, The 13th International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling (SDH 2008), Montpellier, June 2008.

2. Conditional Constraints and Composite Variables with Preferences. Department of Computer Science, Université de Caen, June 2008.

3. Constraint-Based Reasoning. Agents Symposium. Faculty of Engineering, University of Regina, May 2007.

4. Temporal Constraint Propagation. Department of Computer Science, Université d'Auvergne, 1998.
5. Constraint-Based Temporal Reasoning. Intelligent Scheduling Research Group, Enterprise Integration Laboratory & Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, 1997.
6. Temporal Constraints. SAFIR Research Project, INRIA Sophia Antipolis, 1996.

Other Research Activities

• Treasurer and member of the executive committee, Canadian Artificial Intelligence Association (CAIAC), 2009 to 2015.

• Referee of Research Grant and Innovation Program Proposals, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada(NSERC), 2002 to 2013.

• Referee of MITACS Internship Proposals. 2013 and 2014.

• Member of Alberta Ingenuity Fund Peer-Review Advisory Committee, 2005 to 2007.

• Member of the Technical Committee on Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems, 2003 to 2006.

• Member of the editorial advisory board. IGI Global Book: Multidisciplinary Computational Intelligence Techniques: Applications in Business, Engineering and Medicine.

• Participation to the creation of the research group KANEOU PRC on Temporal and Spatial Reasoning, Paris, France, 1996.

• Referee for the following International Book Series, Journals and Conferences
  1. Artificial Intelligence.
  2. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics.
  3. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation (IEEE TEC).
  4. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (IEEE TKDE).
  5. Data & Knowledge Engineering(DKE).
  6. Artificial Intelligence Communications (AICom).
  7. Computational Intelligence.
  8. Applied Intelligence.
  9. Knowledge and Information Systems (KAIS).
  10. The International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering(IJSEKE).

  11. The International Journal of Artificial Intelligence Tools(IJAIT).
  12. Computational Optimization and Applications.

  13. Studies in Computational Intelligence, Book Series, Springer.

  14. Universal Computer Science.

  15. The International Journal of Computational Intelligence and Applications(IJCIA).

  16. The International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2011), RCRA, Barcelona, July 2011.
  17. The 6th International Conference on Signal and Image Processing (SIP 2004), Honolulu, Hawaii, 2004.
  18. The 4th International Conference on Modeling, Simulation, and Optimization(MSO 2004), Kauai, Hawaii, August 17-19, 2004.

  19. The 17th International Conference on Industrial & Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence & Expert Systems(IEA/AIE 2004), Ottawa, May 17-20, 2004.

  20. 3rd International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Applications(AIA 2003), Benalmadena, Spain.
  21. 3rd International Conference on Circuits, Signals, and Systems(CSS 2003), May 19-21, 2003 Cancun, Mexico.
  22. 21st International Multi-Conference on Applied Informatics(AI 2003), Innsbruck, Austria, February 2003.

• Member of the Program Committee at the following International Conferences
  1. The 27th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI 2014), May 6th to May 9th 2014, Montreal, Canada.
  2. The 27th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS 2014), May 21-23, 2014, Pensacola Beach, Florida.
  3. The 26th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS 2013), May 22-24, 2013, St. Pete Beach, Florida.

  4. The 2012 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (IEEE WCCI 2012), special session in Social Network Analysis and Mining, June 10-15, Brisbane, Australia.

  5. The 25th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS 2012), May 23-25, 2012, Marco Island, Florida.

  6. The 24th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS 2011), May 18th to May 20th, 2011, Palm Beach, Florida.

  7. The 24th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI 2011), May 25th to May 27th 2011, Saint John's, Canada.

  8. The 23rd Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI 2010), May 31st to June 2nd, Ottawa, Canada.

  9. The 2010 IEEE International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration (IEEE IRI 2010), Aug 4-6 2010, Las Vegas.

  10. The 2010 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC 2010), October 10-13 2010, Istanbul,TURKEY.

  11. The International Conference on Computational Aspects of Social Networks CASoN 2009 June 24 - 27, 2009, Fontainebleau, France.

  12. The 2009 IEEE International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration (IEEE IRI 2009), Aug 10-12 2009, Las Vegas.

  13. The 20th IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI 2008), November 3-5, 2008, Dayton, Ohio, USA.

  14. The 2008 IEEE International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration (IEEE IRI 2008), July 13-15 2008, Las Vegas.

  15. The 19th IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence(ICTAI 2007), October 29-31 2007, Patras, Greece.

  16. The 14th International Symposium on Temporal Representation and Reasoning (TIME'2007), June 28-30, 2007, Alicante, Spain.

  17. The 3rd Indian International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IICAI-07). December 17-19 2007, Pune, India.

  18. The 18th IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence(ICTAI 2006), November 13-15 2006, Arlington, VA.

  19. International Workshop on AI Technologies for E-Learning, the 14th International Conference on Computers in Education(ICCE2006), November 2006, Beijing.

  20. International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Applications(AIA 2007), February 12-14, 2007, Innsbruck, Austria.

  21. International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference(IWCMC 2006), Workshop on Mobile and Wireless Learning, Vancouver, July 3 - 6, 2006.

  22. International Conference on Intelligent Systems and Control(ISC 2006), August 14-16, 2006, Honolulu, Hawaii.

  23. International Conference on Computational Intelligence(CI 2006), Nov 20-22 2006, San Francisco.

  24. International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Applications(AIA 2006), February 2006, Innsbruck, Austria.

  25. The 2nd Indian International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IICAI-05). December 2005, Pune, INDIA.

  26. International Conference on Artificial Intelligence & Soft Computing(ASC 2005). September 2005, Benidorm, Spain.

  27. International Conference on Intelligent Systems and Control(ISC 2005), November 2005, Cambridge.

  28. The Fourth International Conference on Computational Intelligence(CI 2005), July 2005, Calgary.

  29. The 8th International Conference on Computer Science and Informatics(CSI 2005), Salt Lake city, July 20-26 2005.

  30. International Workshop on Advanced Technologies for E-Learning and E-Science(WI 2004), 2004, Beijing. China.

  31. International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Applications(AIA 2005), February 14-16, 2005, Innsbruck, Austria.

  32. International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Applications (AIA 2004), Innsbruck, Austria, February 2004.

• Organized and Chaired the following Technical Sessions
  1. Multi-objective Optimization. The 27th International Conference on Industrial & Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence & Expert Systems(IEA/AIE 2014), Kaohsiung, June 3-6, 2014.

  2. Intelligence Systems for E-Commerce and Logistics. The 27th International Conference on Industrial & Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence & Expert Systems(IEA/AIE 2014), Kaohsiung, June 3-6, 2014.

  3. Applications of AI. The 27th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence(AI'2014), Montreal, May 6th-9th, Montreal.

  4. Agents and Ontologies and Embedded and Ubiquitous Software Engineering. International Conference on Software Engineering & Knowledge Engineering, SEKE 2013, Boston, June 27-29, 2013.

  5. Optimization. The 26th International Conference on Industrial & Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence & Expert Systems(IEA/AIE 2013), Amsterdam, June 18-20, 2013.

  6. Doctoral and Best Paper Awards. The 26th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence(AI'2013), Regina, May 2013.

  7. E-Commerce. The International Conference on e-Commerce, e-Administration, e-Society, e-Education, and e-Technology (e-CASE & e-Tech 2012), March 30 $-$ April 1, 2012, Hong Kong.

  8. Recommender Systems & Applications. The 25th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence(AI'2012), Toronto, May 2012.

  9. Constraint Satisfaction. The 24th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence(AI'2011), Saint John's, May 2011.

  10. Constraint Satisfaction. The 23rd Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence(AI'2010), Ottawa, May 2010.

  11. Computational Intelligence and Soft Computing. The 2008 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC 2008), Singapore, October 2008.

  12. Heuristic Search. The Twenty First International Conference on Industrial, Engineering & Other Applications of Applied Intelligent Systems (IEA/AIE'08). Wroclaw, Poland, June 2008.

  13. Constraint Satisfaction. The 20th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence(AI'2007), Montreal, May 2007.

  14. Modelling and Simulation Methodologies, International Conference on Modelling and Simulation(MS 2005), May 2005, Cancun, Mexico.
  15. Neural Networks, the Seventeenth Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence(AI'2004), London, Ontario, 2004.
  16. Genetic and Optimization Algorithms and Fuzzy Logic. The 3rd International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Applications (AIA 2003), Benalmadena, Spain.
  17. Neural Networks. 7th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing(ASC), 2003, Banff, Canada.
  18. Fuzzy Sets and Logic, Theory and Applications. International Naiso Symposium on Information Science Innovations in Engineering of Natural and Artificial Intelligent Systems(ENAIS'2001), Dubai, 2001.
  19. Database and Information Systems. IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence(ICTAI'2000), Vancouver, 2000.
  20. Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization. IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence(ICTAI'2000), Vancouver, 2000.