Call for Outreach Initiatives

The Association for Constraint Programming (ACP) supports initiatives in favor of outreach to other scientific communities and industries. Constraint Programming (CP) offers powerful techniques in combinatorial optimization, and has successfully been applied to various domains, including logistics, scheduling, bioinformatics, cryptography, computer music, and verification. Yet, the use of CP techniques in combination with technologies from other disciplines, or on a wider range of applications, has not reached its potential. The ACP supports the promotion of CP and is willing to develop its impact in scientific or industrial communities, where CP technologies could be better or more widely used.

The ACP will fund initiatives to build bridges with either new areas of industrial applications, or other scientific communities. The funding will be a total of up to 5000 euros each year, where each initiative can be supported with at most 1000 euros. There is no deadline for submissions; the call for submissions is permanently open.

Submissions will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

  • Novelty: already existing or regular events are not eligible
  • Target audience: the proposed event must reach new communities where CP may apply
  • Potential impact: the proposal must have significant impact, either by promoting CP to a possibly small but promising audience, or by reaching a large audience
  • Scientific quality: the applicants must have significant expertise in CP
  • Interest for the whole community: initiatives must promote CP in general, rather than a specific lab or researcher

Examples of such initiatives include the organisation of a demo of some CP tools in front of an industry audience, of a CP workshop, tutorial or panel at a conference where CP is not usually presented, or the production of communication tools targeting industry. Note that these are only examples and other ideas are very welcome.

To apply, please send a description of the proposed event by email to secretary@a4cp.org with the word “Outreach” in the subject, and the following information:

  • Description of the initiative
  • Novelty
  • Target audience (quality and quantity)
  • Expected impact
  • Short CV (Justification of the required funding (up to 1000 euros)