• Research Interests
• Funding
• Awards
• Invited Talks
• Other Research Activities

Research

Research Interests

• Constraint Satisfaction
• Combinatorial Optimization
• Spatio-Temporal Reasoning
• Preference Reasoning
• Metaheuristics
• Constraint Acquisition
• Preference Learning
• Machine Learning
• Blockchain Technology
• Natural Language Processing
• Robot Motion Planning
• Scheduling, Planning and Timetabling
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
• Artificial Intelligence

Funding

• NSERC¹ Individual Discovery Grant: 2000 - 2005, 2005 - 2010, 2010 - 2016, 2016 - 2021, and 2021-2026.
• SaskPower Chair in Artificial Intelligence Research Grant, 2021 - 2024, Smart Homes for Efficient Grid-wide Energy Consumption (Collaborator: SaskPower).
• Mitacs Accelerate fund, 2021. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Swarm Collaboration for Weed Control in Field Crops. (Collaborator: Precision.ai)
• Mitacs Accelerate fund, 2020. Creative Artificial Intelligence in Interactive Mobile Systems. (Collaborator: Ericsson Canada)
• Mitacs Research Training Award, 2020. Breast Cancer Diagnosis Using Deep Feedforward Neural Network and Mother Tree Optimization.
• Mitacs Accelerate fund, 2018. Communication Aid for Non-English Speaking Newcomers. (Collaborators: George Reed Foundation, Regina Public Library, United Way of Regina)
• NSERC Engage Grant, 2018. Blockchain Technology for Electric Utility Consumption. (Collaborator: SaskPower)
• NSERC Engage Grant, 2016. Vehicle Routing in a Dynamic Environment. (Collaborator: Infrastructure Data Solutions Inc.)
• University of Regina President Research Seed Grant, 2020. Preference-based multi- objective combinatorial optimization for healthcare personnel scheduling.
• Distance and Distributed Learning Fund, 2020. Development of an Online Course - Artificial Intelligence(CS 820).
• Distance and Distributed Learning Fund, 2018. Development of an Online Course - Data Structures and Algorithms(CS 340).
• French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mobility Program of Science and Technology, 2009, 2010 and 2012.
• Viterra Professor Grant.
• Innovation and Science Fund, Saskatchewan. With Mohamed El-Darieby (Leader), 2009.
• NSERC Research Tools and Instruments(RTI) Grant. Leader. With Terence Chan and Samira Sadaoui.
• Sun Microsystems Matching Grant, 2005.
• University of Regina Start Up Fund, 2002 - 2004.
• University of Regina VP Research Fund, 2002.
• Technology Enhanced Learning(TEL) Fund, 2003 - 2006.
• University of Lethbridge Research Fund.
• Research Excellence Envelope, University of Lethbridge.

Awards and Recognitions

• Distinguished Service Award, the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Association, 2022
• Review Board Award, International Journal of Applied Intelligence, Springer
• Review Recognition Certificate, Artificial Intelligence Journal, Elsevier
• Distinguished Paper Award for the paper titled: -A Preference-aware Interactive System for Online Shopping. The International Conference on e-Commerce, e-Administration, e-Society, e- Education, and e-Technology (e-CASE & e-Tech 2012). Hong Kong, March 30 - April 1, 2012 (see publication 73 in Section 5.4)
• Viterra Professor. University of Regina. 2008.
• The World Academy of Sciences Achievement Award. Las Vegas, 2002

Invited Talks and Tutorial Speaker

1. Preference-Based Problem Solving for Combinatorial Applications. The 2023 IEEE Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC 2023), October 1-4, 2023, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
2. Exact vs Metaheuristics for Solving Combinatorial Problems,Tutorial Speaker, the 28th International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP 2021), December 8, 2021, Bali, Indonesia (virtual presentation).
3. Metaheuristics for NP-hard Combinatorial Problems, Tutorial Speaker, IEEE World Congress On Evolutionary Computation, Krakow, Poland, June 28, 2021.
4. Nature-Inspired Techniques for Combinatorial Problems, Tutorial Speaker, IEEE World Congress On Computational Intelligence (WCCI 2020), July 19, 2020, Glasgow, United Kingdom(virtual presentation).
5. Constraint-Based Temporal Reasoning. RTE 08, The 13th International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling (SDH 2008), Montpellier, June 2008.
6. Conditional Constraints and Composite Variables with Preferences. Department of Computer Science, Université de Caen, June 2008.
7. Constraint-Based Reasoning. Agents Symposium. Faculty of Engineering, University of Regina, May 2007.
8. Temporal Constraint Propagation. Department of Computer Science, Université d'Auvergne, 1998.
9. Constraint-Based Temporal Reasoning. Intelligent Scheduling Research Group, Enterprise Integration Laboratory & Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, 1997.
10. Temporal Constraints. SAFIR Research Project, INRIA Sophia Antipolis, 1996.

Grant Review

1. Referee of Research Grant and Innovation Program Proposals, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada(NSERC), 2002 to present.
2. Expert Reviewer for Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC), 2021.
3. Member of the Ontario Research Fund-Research Excellence (ORF-RE) Peer Review Panel, 2019.
4. Site Visit Committee Member for an NSERC Industrial Research Chair (IRC) application, 2017.
5. Referee of MITACS Internship Proposals. 2013 to present.
6. Member of Alberta Ingenuity Fund Peer-Review Advisory Committee, 2005 to 2007.

Event Administration

1. Co-organizer and Program Co-Chair of the 31st International Conference on Industrial, Engineering, Other Applications of Applied Intelligent Systems (IEA/AIE 2018), Montreal, June 25 - 28, 2018.
2. Program Co-Chair of the IFIP International Conference On Computational Intelligence And Its Applications (IFIP CIIA 2018), Oran, May 6 - 8, 2018.
3. Program Co-Chair of the 30th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Edmonton, May 16 - 19, 2017.
4. Session Chair
   1. Long paper session 11 . The 36th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Montreal, June 5-9, 2023.
   2. Multi-Agent Systems. The 15th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence (ICAART 2023), Lisbon, February 22-24, 2023.
   3. Neural Networks. The 15th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence (ICAART 2023), February 22-24, 2023.
   4. Applied Cryptography and Privacy I. The 19th International Conference on Security and Cryptography (SECRYPT 2022), July 11 - 13, 2022.
   5. Agent systems and robotics. The 35th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Toronto, May 30 - June 3, 2022.
   6. Evolutionary Computing. The 14th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence (ICAART 2022), Online Streaming, February 3-5, 2022.
   7. Artificial Intelligence. The 13th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence (ICAART 2021), Online Streaming, February 4-6, 2021.
   8. Machine Learning. The 12th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence (ICAART 2020), Valletta, Malta, February 22-24, 2020.
   9. Swarm Intelligence. The 2019 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics(IEEE SMC 2019), Bari, October 06-09, 2019.
   10. Knowledge Acquisition in Intelligent Systems. The 2019 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics(IEEE SMC 2019), Bari, October 06-09, 2019.
   11. Swarm Intelligence and Autonomous Systems. The 2019 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics(IEEE SMC 2019), Bari, October 06-09, 2019.
   12. Optimization. The 32nd International Conference On Industrial, Engineering & Other Applications Of Applied Intelligent Systems (IEA/AIE 2019), Graz, July 9-11, 2019.
   13. Swarm Intelligence and Ant Colony Optimization. The 2018 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (IEEE CEC 2018), Rio de Janeiro, July 08-13, 2018.
   14. Short Talks. The 31st Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Toronto, May 8 - 11, 2018.
   15. Clustering and classification methods with applications. The16th IEEE International Conference On Machine Learning And Applications, Cancun, December 18 - 21, 2017.
   16. Constraint, Planning and Optimization. The 30th International Conference on Industrial & Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems (IEA/AIE 2017), Arras, June 27 - 30, 2017.
   17. Artificial Intelligence. The 9th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence (ICAART 2017), Porto, February 24-26, 2017.
   18. Constraint Satisfaction. The 25th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI’2016), New York City, July 9 - 15, 2016.
   19. Algorithms. The 28th International FLAIRS Conference, Hollywood, Florida, May 18 - 20, 2015.
   20. Doctoral Award. The 28th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI’2015), Halifax, June 2 -5, 2015.
   21. Optimization. The 28th International Conference on Industrial & Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence & Expert Systems (IEA/AIE 2015), Seoul, June 10-12, 2015.
   22. Multi-objective Optimization. The 27th International Conference on Industrial & Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence & Expert Systems(IEA/AIE 2014), Kaohsiung, June 3-6, 2014.
   23. 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.
   24. Applications of AI. The 27th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence(AI'2014), Montreal, May 6th-9th, Montreal.
   25. Agents and Ontologies and Embedded and Ubiquitous Software Engineering. International Conference on Software Engineering & Knowledge Engineering, SEKE 2013, Boston, June 27-29, 2013.
   26. Optimization. The 26th International Conference on Industrial & Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence & Expert Systems(IEA/AIE 2013), Amsterdam, June 18-20, 2013.
   27. Doctoral and Best Paper Awards. The 26th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence(AI'2013), Regina, May 2013.
   28. 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.
   29. Recommender Systems & Applications. The 25th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence(AI'2012), Toronto, May 2012.
   30. Constraint Satisfaction. The 24th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence(AI'2011), Saint John's, May 2011.
   31. Constraint Satisfaction. The 23rd Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence(AI'2010), Ottawa, May 2010.
   32. Computational Intelligence and Soft Computing. The 2008 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC 2008), Singapore, October 2008.
   33. Heuristic Search. The Twenty First International Conference on Industrial, Engineering & Other Applications of Applied Intelligent Systems (IEA/AIE'08). Wroclaw, Poland, June 2008.
   34. Constraint Satisfaction. The 20th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence(AI'2007), Montreal, May 2007.
   35. Modelling and Simulation Methodologies, International Conference on Modelling and Simulation(MS 2005), May 2005, Cancun, Mexico.
   36. Neural Networks, the Seventeenth Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence(AI'2004), London, Ontario, 2004.
   37. Genetic and Optimization Algorithms and Fuzzy Logic. The 3rd International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Applications (AIA 2003), Benalmadena, Spain.
   38. Neural Networks. 7th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing(ASC), 2003, Banff, Canada.
   39. 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.
   40. Database and Information Systems. IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence(ICTAI'2000), Vancouver, 2000.
   41. Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization. IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence(ICTAI'2000), Vancouver, 2000.

Editorial Activities

1. Action Editor for the Computational Intelligence Journal, 2015 to present.
2. Guest Editor for the Applied Intelligence Journal, 2018.
3. Member of the Review Board for the Applied Intelligence Journal, 2014 to present.
4. Member of the Technical Committee on Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems, 2003 to 2006.
5. Member of the editorial advisory board. IGI Global Book: Multidisciplinary Computational Intelligence Techniques: Applications in Business, Engineering and Medicine.
6. Participation to the creation of the research group KANEOU PRC on Temporal and Spatial Reasoning, Paris, France, 1996.

Committee Membership

1. Treasurer and member of the executive committee, Canadian Artificial Intelligence Association (CAIAC), 2009 to 2015.
2. Conference Program Committee Member
   1. The 38th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-24), February 20 - 27, 2023, Vancouver
   2. The 37th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-23), February 7 - 14, 2022, Washington DC, USA
   3. The 29th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-20), July 11-17, 2020, Yokohama, Japan
   4. The 28th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-19), August 10-16, 2019, Macao, China
   5. IJCAI 2015 Joint Workshop on Constraints and Preferences for Configuration and Recommendation and Intelligent Techniques for Web Personalization (CPCR+ITWP), 25-27 July 2015, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
   6. The 35th IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI 2023), November 6-8, 2023, Atlanta
   7. The 34th IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI 2022), November 1-3, 2022, Virtual Conference
   8. The 33rd IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI 2021), November 1-3, 2021, Virtual Conference
   9. The 32nd IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI 2020), November 9-11, 2020, Virtual Conference
   10. The 31st IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI 2019), November 4-6, 2019, Portland, USA.
   11. The 20th IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI 2008), November 3-5, 2008, Dayton, Ohio, USA.
   12. The 19th IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence(ICTAI 2007), October 29-31 2007, Patras, Greece.
   13. The 36th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI 2023), June 5-9, 2023, Montreal, Canada
   14. The 35th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI 2022), May 30 -June 03, 2022, Toronto, Canada
   15. The 34th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI 2021), May 25 - 28, 2021, Vancouver, Canada
   16. The 33rd Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI 2020), May 12 - 15, 2020, Virtual Conference
   17. The 32nd Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI 2019), May 28 - 31, 2019, Kingston, Canada
   18. The 31st Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI 2018), May 8-11, 2018, Toronto, Canada.
   19. The 29th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI 2016), May 31- June 3, 2016, Victoria, Canada.
   20. The 28th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI 2015), June 02-05, 2014, Halifax, Canada.
   21. The 27th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI 2014), May 6th to May 9th 2014, Montreal, Canada.
   22. The 24th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI 2011), May 25th to May 27th 2011, Saint John's, Canada.
   23. The 23rd Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI 2010), May 31st to June 2nd, Ottawa, Canada.
   24. The 36th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS 2023), May 14-17, 2023, Clearwater Beach, Florida.
   25. The 35th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS 2022), May 15-18, 2022 Hutchinson Island, Jensen Beach, Florida.
   26. The 34th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS 2021), May 16-19, 2021, North Miami Beach, Florida.
   27. The 33rd International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS 2020), May 17-20, 2020, North Miami Beach, Florida.
   28. The 32nd International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS 2019), May 19-22, 2019, Sarasota, Florida.
   29. The 31st International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS 2018), May 21-23, 2018, Melbourne, Florida.
   30. The 30th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS 2017), May 22-24, 2017, Marco Island, Florida.
   31. The 29th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS 2015), May 16-18, 2016, Key Largo, Florida.
   32. The 28th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS 2015), May 18-20, 2015, Hollywood, Florida.
   33. The 27th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS 2014), May 21-23, 2014, Pensacola Beach, Florida.
   34. The 26th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS 2013), May 22-24, 2013, St. Pete Beach, Florida.
   35. The 25th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS 2012), May 23-25, 2012, Marco Island, Florida.
   36. The 24th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference (FLAIRS 2011), May 18th to May 20th, 2011, Palm Beach, Florida.
   37. The 32nd International Conference on Industrial, Engineering and Other Applications of Applied Intelligent Systems (IEA/AIE 2019), Graz, Austria, July 9-11, 2019.
   38. The 17th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence: Methodology, Systems, Applications (AIMSA 2016), Varna, Bulgaria, September 7 - 9, 2016.
   39. The 2012 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (IEEE WCCI 2012), special session in Social Network Analysis and Mining, June 10-15, Brisbane, Australia.
   40. The 2010 IEEE International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration (IEEE IRI 2010), Aug 4-6 2010, Las Vegas.
   41. The 2010 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC 2010), October 10-13 2010, Istanbul,TURKEY.
   42. The International Conference on Computational Aspects of Social Networks CASoN 2009 June 24 - 27, 2009, Fontainebleau, France.
   43. The 2009 IEEE International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration (IEEE IRI 2009), Aug 10-12 2009, Las Vegas.
   44. The 2008 IEEE International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration (IEEE IRI 2008), July 13-15 2008, Las Vegas.
   45. The 14th International Symposium on Temporal Representation and Reasoning (TIME'2007), June 28-30, 2007, Alicante, Spain.
   46. The 3rd Indian International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IICAI-07). December 17-19 2007, Pune, India.
   47. The 18th IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence(ICTAI 2006), November 13-15 2006, Arlington, VA.
   48. International Workshop on AI Technologies for E-Learning, the 14th International Conference on Computers in Education(ICCE2006), November 2006, Beijing.
   49. International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Applications(AIA 2007), February 12-14, 2007, Innsbruck, Austria.
   50. International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference(IWCMC 2006), Workshop on Mobile and Wireless Learning, Vancouver, July 3 - 6, 2006.
   51. International Conference on Intelligent Systems and Control(ISC 2006), August 14-16, 2006, Honolulu, Hawaii.
   52. International Conference on Computational Intelligence(CI 2006), Nov 20-22 2006, San Francisco.
   53. International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Applications(AIA 2006), February 2006, Innsbruck, Austria.
   54. The 2nd Indian International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IICAI-05). December 2005, Pune, INDIA.
   55. International Conference on Artificial Intelligence & Soft Computing(ASC 2005). September 2005, Benidorm, Spain.
   56. International Conference on Intelligent Systems and Control(ISC 2005), November 2005, Cambridge.
   57. The Fourth International Conference on Computational Intelligence(CI 2005), July 2005, Calgary.
   58. The 8th International Conference on Computer Science and Informatics(CSI 2005), Salt Lake city, July 20-26 2005.
   59. International Workshop on Advanced Technologies for E-Learning and E-Science(WI 2004), 2004, Beijing. China.
   60. International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Applications(AIA 2005), February 14-16, 2005, Innsbruck, Austria.
   61. International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Applications (AIA 2004), Innsbruck, Austria, February 2004.

Journals, Books and Book Series Reviewer

1. Book Reviewer for Morgan and Claypool Publishers.
2. Artificial Intelligence.
3. Artificial Intelligence
4. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR)
5. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics.
6. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation (IEEE TEC).
7. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (IEEE TKDE).
8. Data & Knowledge Engineering(DKE).
9. Information Sciences.
10. Artificial Intelligence Communications (AICom).
11. Computational Intelligence.
12. Applied Intelligence.
13. Knowledge and Information Systems (KAIS).
14. The International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering(IJSEKE).
15. The International Journal of Artificial Intelligence Tools(IJAIT).
16. Computational Optimization and Applications.
17. Studies in Computational Intelligence, Book Series, Springer.
18. Universal Computer Science.
19. The International Journal of Computational Intelligence and Applications(IJCIA).
20. The International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2011), RCRA, Barcelona, July 2011.
21. The 6th International Conference on Signal and Image Processing (SIP 2004), Honolulu, Hawaii, 2004.
22. The 4th International Conference on Modeling, Simulation, and Optimization(MSO 2004), Kauai, Hawaii, August 17-19, 2004.
23. The 17th International Conference on Industrial & Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence & Expert Systems(IEA/AIE 2004), Ottawa, May 17-20, 2004.
24. 3rd International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Applications(AIA 2003), Benalmadena, Spain.
25. 3rd International Conference on Circuits, Signals, and Systems(CSS 2003), May 19-21, 2003 Cancun, Mexico.
26. 21st International Multi-Conference on Applied Informatics(AI 2003), Innsbruck, Austria, February 2003.