Artificial Intelligence Group

Alan Frisch

What's New

Research and Publications

Over the years I have conducted a wide range of research on the principles of knowledge representation and reasoning with particular interest in applying the results to problems in planning, natural language processing, logic programming, knowledge retrieval, inductive logic programming, probabilistic reasoning, search and spatio-temporal reasoning.

Further information on my research, including publications:

• My research on constraint programming and SAT.

• Some of my publications (and those of other members of the Artificial Intelligence Group).

• I was the principal investigator for an EPSRC-funded project (L31 4) entitled Development of an Inductive Proof Assistant for Z Integrating Classical and Rewrite Strategies. It ran from January 1997 through April 2000.

• Many of the student projects that I have supervised are related to my research.

Teaching

• COPR: Constraint Programming.
• TPOP: Theory and Principles of Programming.
• SKIL: Skills, Knowledge and Independent Learning.
• LPA: Logic Programming and Artificial Intelligence (for undergrads)
• ToC: Theory of Computing,
• IAI: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence,
• LAI: Logic Programming and Artificial Intelligence (for MSc conversion students),
• ALP: Advanced Logic Programming
• CSO: Constraint Satisfaction and Combinatorial Optimization

Material useful for my teaching activities can be found on my Teaching Resources Page.

External Activities

Modelling Workshop: In 2002 I founded the annual International Workshop on Reformulating Constraint Satisfaction Problems: Towards Systematisation and Automation (now called the International Workshop on Constraint Modelling and Reformulation). I served as workshop chair in 2002 and 2003, as joint chair in 2004, and as programme committee member in all other years.

ILP-2000: James Cussens and I were Chairs of ILP-2000, the Tenth International Conference on Inductive Logic Programming. This led us to edit a Special Issue on Inductive Logic Programming for the Journal of Machine Learning Research.

Workshops/Conferences: I have been the program chair for six workshops--including two on hybrid reasoning--and served a Tutorial and Workshop chair of CP 2005. I have served on the program committees of many conferences, including AAAI, IJCAI, ECAI, CP, KR, CADE, ILP, LPAR, AI and ICIS.

Workshop on Automated Reasoning: In 1993 I founded the workshop series entitled "Workshop on Automated Reasoning: Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice". and then served as Chair of the Organizing Committee until 2004.

SIGART Vice-Chair: Twice elected Vice-Chair of SIGART, the ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence. I held this office from 1991 to 1995 during which international membership exceeded 7000.

Peer Review College: Twice elected as a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College.

External Examining: I have held five appointments as External Examiner for taught degree programmes in artificial intelligence and computer science.

Computer Science Department Activities

I am currently a member of the Department Research Committee, the Research Studies Committee and the University Senate.

Previous activities inclued:

• Chairing the Department Research Committee for almost three years.
• Running the Departmental Seminar Series. and the Artificial Intelligence Interest Group Seminar Series.

• Serving for over 14 years as the Department's International Exchange Coordinator..

• Handling the applications for admission of visiting students.

• Serving on the Departmental Computer User Committee, the Departmental Graduate Studies Committee and Departmental Research Committee.

• For many years I was responsible for publicising the Department's graduate courses. Among the wads of material I wrote or edited are:
  • The Department's Graduate Studies Web Pages.
  • A collection of flyers describing the research activities of the Department.
  • The Department's entry in the University of York Graduate Prospectus.
  • "Research Topics for Graduate Students", a catalog of potential research topics for new research students. It is available in gzipped postscript and in HTML.
  • Instructions for staff contributing entries to "Research Topics for Graduate Students".
  • A mailing list of addresses to which our publicity material is sent.

Biographical Sketch

I hold a BS in Mathematics from Carnegie-Mellon University, and an MS and PhD in Computer Science from the University of Rochester. My PhD thesis, entitled "Knowledge Retrieval as Specialized Inference", was supervised by James Allen.