Subject: PATAT 2000 2nd Announcement

From: Edmund Burke <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 99 11:54:38 GMT

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                               CALL FOR PAPERS

                                 PATAT 2000

                         The 3rd international conference
              on the Practice And Theory of Automated Timetabling

               Wednesday, 16th August - Friday, 18th August 2000

                          Fachhochschule Konstanz
                       University of Applied Sciences
                             Constance, Germany

This conference is the third in a series of conferences that serve as
a forum for an international community of researchers, practitioners and
vendors on all aspects of computer-aided timetable generation. For more
information about the series of conferences see

http://www.asap.cs.nott.ac.uk/ASAP/ttg/patat-index.html

The themes of the conference include (but are not limited to):

   o  Sports Timetabling
   o  Educational Timetabling
   o  Transport Timetabling
   o  Employee Timetabling
   o  Complexity Issues
   o  Distributed Timetabling Systems
   o  Experiences
   o  Implementations
   o  Commercial Packages
   o  Interactive vs Batch Timetabling
   o  Timetable Updating
   o  Relationship with Other Scheduling Problems
   o  Timetabling Research Areas, including: Constraint Based Methods
					     Evolutionary Computation
                    			     Artificial Intelligence
					     Graph Colouring
					     Expert Systems
					     Heuristic Search
					     Knowledge Based Systems
					     Operational Research
					     Simulated Annealing
					     Local Search
					     Mathematical Programming
					     Soft Computing
					     Tabu Search

Submissions:

All submissions should include a cover page which
states clearly:

             (1) the names of the authors
             (2) the contact person and address
             (3) e-mail address (if you have one)
             (4) Keywords
             (5) The category of submission (full paper or abstract)

The keywords should mention the relevant conference themes listed above
(if this is possible).

Authors are invited to submit presentations in one of two categories:

(a) Full Papers

Authors should submit papers describing significant, original and
unpublished work. Four (hard) copies of the paper should be submitted
by January 21st 2000 to Dr E.K.Burke at the address below. We expect the
length of the final papers to be no more than 8000 words.

These papers will be fully refereed by the programme committee
and the accepted ones will appear in a conference proceedings
(ISBN 3-00-003866-3).

A selection of the papers will appear in a post conference volume
published in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science series.
The second round of refereeing for this volume will take place shortly
after the conference.

(b) Abstracts

Authors can submit abstracts of up to 1000 words to Dr E.K.Burke.
Four (hard) copies of the abstract should be submitted by January 21st
2000.

Abstracts will be fully refereed. The accepted ones will
appear in the conference proceedings (ISBN 3-00-003866-3). The actual
abstracts will not go forward to the second round of refereeing for
the post-conference volume. However, authors of accepted abstracts
will have the opportunity to write a paper (based on their abstract)
and submit it for the selected papers volume at a later date
(shortly after the conference).

People who wish to give a talk (e.g.  practitioners, researchers with
incomplete work) but do not want to write an academic paper can submit
under this category.

Deadlines:

   Paper/abstract submissions         	January 21st 2000
   Notification of acceptance           April 21st 2000 (at the latest)

Programme Committee

Edmund Burke (co-chair)    	University of Nottingham, UK
Wilhelm Erben (co-chair)       	FH Konstanz - University of Applied 
				Sciences, Germany
Victor Bardadym        		International Renaissance Foundation,
				Kiev, Ukraine
James Blakesley                 Purdue University, West Lafayette, USA
Patrice Boizumault              Ecole des Mines de Nantes, France
Michael Carter                  University of Toronto, Canada
David Corne                     University of Reading, UK
Andrew Cumming                  Napier University, Edinburgh, UK
Patrick De Causmaecker          KaHo St.-Lieven, Gent, Belgium
Marco Dorigo                    Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Kathryn Dowsland                University of Wales Swansea, UK
Jacques Ferland                 Universite de Montreal, Canada
Alain Hertz                     EPF-Lausanne, Switzerland
Jeffrey Kingston                University of Sydney, Australia
Gilbert Laporte                 Universite de Montreal, Canada
Vahid Lotfi                     University of Michigan-Flint, USA
Henri Luchian                   "Al. I. Cuza" University, Iasi, Romania
Michael Magazine                University of Cincinnati, USA
Amnon  Meisels                  Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel
Thiruthlall Nepal               ML Sultan Technikon, Durban, South Africa
James Newall                    University of Nottingham, UK
Ben Paechter                    Napier University, Edinburgh, UK
Peter Ross                      University of Edinburgh, UK
Andrea Schaerf                  Universita` di Udine, Italy
Jan Schreuder                   University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
Jonathan Thompson               Cardiff University, UK
Michael Trick                   Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA
Rupert Weare                    Cap Gemini plc, Newcastle, UK
Dominique de Werra              EPF-Lausanne, Switzerland
George White                    University of Ottawa, Canada
Michael Wright                  Lancaster University, UK
Jay Yellen                      Florida Tech, Melbourne, USA
Masazumi Yoshikawa              NEC Corporation, Kawasaki, Japan

About the Venue:

Lake Constance is Europe's second largest inland lake. It lies nestled in a
beautiful landscape of hills and mountains between Germany, Switzerland and
Austria. At the point where the lake drains into the river Rhine there was
an old Roman fort, which later became the medieval town of Constance
(Konstanz). This central medieval part of the town, directly adjoining the
shore, still survives today.

Constance has a population of around 76,000 and has two universities.
During summer, tourists from all over the world visit the region which
offers a range of tourist opportunities such as watersports, cycling,
rambling, boat excursions and many more.  The nearby Swiss Alps offer
many opportunities for extended mountain tours.  The region is host to
important cultural monuments from every period.  A number of medieval
castles and baroque churches are of particular interest.  At the Bregenz
Festival, which takes place every summer, operas and concerts are performed
on a unique stage over the lake. In July/August 2000 Giuseppe Verdi's "A
Masked Ball" will be on the programme.

Constance is easily accessible by train from the airports of Zurich
(Switzerland; 75 km), Stuttgart (190 km), Munich (230 km) or
Frankfurt (345 km).

The following web sites contain more information about Lake Constance
(known as the "Bodensee" to German speakers):
        http://www.bodensee-info.com/
        http://www.bodensee-magazin.de/home_e.htm

Would you like to go to the Bregenz Festival? Then have a look at
        http://www.bregenzerfestspiele.com

You could also take the opportunity to visit the World Exposition EXPO 2000
during your stay in Germany. It will take place in Hanover from July to
October. Further details can be found from the following web site:
        http://www.expo2000.de/englisch/

For more information, contact:

Dr E.K.Burke
Automated Scheduling and Planning Research Group.
School of Computer Science and Information Technology
University of Nottingham
University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD
United Kingdom
e-mail: [email-masked]

or

Dr W.Erben
Department of Computer Science
FH Konstanz - University of Applied Sciences
e-mail: [email-masked]

PATAT 2000 WEB SITE
Full updated information is always available from
http://www.fh-konstanz.de/patat2000/