LAST CALL FOR PAPERS & DEMONSTRATIONS
________Submission deadline_______January 27th_____________
PATAT 2006
The 6th International Conference
on the Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling
http://patat06.muni.cz
Wednesday, 30th August - Friday, 1st September 2006
organized by the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University
Hotel International
Brno
Czech Republic
This conference is the sixth 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/patat/patat-index.shtml
The themes of the conference include (but are not limited to):
o Educational Timetabling
o Transport Timetabling
o Employee Timetabling and Rostering
o Sports Timetabling
o Complexity Issues
o Distributed Timetabling Systems
o Experiences
o Implementations
o Commercial Packages
o Interactive vs Batch Timetabling
o Timetable Updating
o Standard Data Formats
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
Meta-Heuristics
Hyper-Heuristics
Very Large Neighborhood Search
Ant Colony Methods
Hybrid Methods
Multi-Criteria Decision Making
Fuzzy Reasoning
The Featured Keynote Speakers for this conference are:
Barry McCollum (Queen's University and eventMAP Ltd., UK)
Michel Gendreau (Centre de Recheche sur les Transports, Montréal, Canada)
James Orlin (MIT, USA)
Andrea Schaerf (Universita di Udine, Italy)
Submissions:
Authors are invited to submit presentations in one of three categories:
(a) Full Papers
Authors should submit papers describing significant, original and
unpublished work. Such papers are expected to be approximately 10-20
pages in length but this guideline is not strict. These papers will be
fully refereed by the programme committee and the accepted ones will
appear in a conference proceedings (ISBN 80-210-3726-1). As in
previous years, 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. Abstracts will be
fully refereed. The accepted ones will appear in the conference
proceedings. 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 full paper
based on their abstract and submit it for the selected papers volume.
People who wish to give a talk (e.g. practitioners, researchers with
preliminary or incomplete papers) but do not want to submit a full
paper can submit under this category.
(c) System Demonstrations:
Authors can submit an abstract, describing the major properties and
contribution of implemented and/or commercial timetabling systems.
Abstracts should not exceed 1000 words (3-4 pages). Authors of
accepted submissions in this category are expected to provide a
demonstration of their software during the conference. Demonstration
submissions will be evaluated on the basis of their innovation,
relevance and scientific contribution. The abstracts will be
published in the conference proceedings but they will not be forwarded
to the second round of refereeing for the post-conference volume.
However, authors of accepted system demonstration abstracts are
welcome to submit a full paper to the post-conference volume if they
so wish.
Submission Instructions:
Authors are kindly requested to submit their papers/abstracts/demonstrations
(written in English) through our online submission system available from
http://patat06.muni.cz . The length of the paper should fulfill the
requirements given for each category above.
All papers must be submitted as a PDF file and authors are
requested to use the Springer llncs style (downloadable from
http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html#Proceedings):
* the LaTeX version is preferred,
* the Microsoft Word version is also acceptable,
* no other format can be accepted.
Authors using Microsoft Word must use the LNCS template for Microsoft Word.
All fonts must be embedded in the sent PDF files. Outline fonts (e.g.
Type 1) are strongly preferred to bitmap fonts. Please, check fonts
used by Adobe Reader (downloadable from
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html)
at File->Document Properties->Fonts.
Authors who have problems with the online system should contact one of
the co-chairs of the Programme Committee for instructions. Please note
that all participants will need to register for the conference and pay
the registration fee in order for accepted submissions to appear in
the conference proceedings.
Preliminary announcement about the format of camera-ready papers:
For all accepted papers, we will require PDF file together with all
source files. Only documents written in LaTeX or Microsoft Word can be
sent as a camera-ready paper.
In the case of the LaTeX format usage, please, prepare your
figures/pictures either in EPS (encapsulated PostScript) or in EPDF
(encapsulated PDF). This is necessary because all vector graphics must
remain in a resolution independent format.
Deadlines:
Paper/abstract/system submissions January 27th 2006
Notification April 28th 2006 (at the latest)
Programme Committee:
Edmund Burke (co-chair) University of Nottingham, UK
Hana Rudová (co-chair) Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Hesham Alfares King Fahd University, Saudi Arabia
Viktor Bardadym Noveon Inc., Belgium
James Bean University of Michigan, USA
Peter Brucker University of Osnabrück, Germany
Michael Carter University of Toronto, Canada
Peter Cowling University of Bradford, UK
Patrick De Causmaecker KaHo St.-Lieven, Gent, Belgium
Kathryn Dowsland Gower Optimal Algorithms Ltd. UK
Andreas Drexl University of Kiel, Germany
Moshe Dror University of Arizona, USA
Wilhelm Erben FH Konstanz - University of Applied Sciences, Germany
Jacques A. Ferland University of Montreal, Canada
Michel Gendreau Centre de Recherche sur les Transports, Montréal, Canada
Alain Hertz Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal, Canada
Jeffrey Kingston University of Sydney, Australia
Raymond Kwan University of Leeds, UK
Gilbert Laporte Université de Montréal, Canada
Vahid Lotfi University of Michigan-Flint, USA
Amnon Meisels Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel
Thiruthlall Nepal Durban Institute of Technology, South Africa
Jim Newall eventMAP Ltd, UK
Ben Paechter Napier University, Edinburgh, UK
Gilles Pesant Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal, Canada
Sanja Petrovic University of Nottingham, UK
Jean-Yves Potvin Université de Montréal, Canada
Rong Qu University of Nottingham, UK
Andrea Schaerf Universita di Udine, Italy
Jan Schreuder University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
Jonathan Thompson Cardiff University, UK
Paolo Toth University of Bologna, Italy
Michael Trick Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Greet Vanden Berghe KaHo St.-Lieven, Belgium
Stefan Voss University of Hamburg, Germany
Dominique de Werra EPF-Lausanne, Switzerland
George White University of Ottawa, Canada
Michael Wright Lancaster University, UK
Jay Yellen Rollins College, USA
About the Venue:
Brno is the Czech Republic's second largest city. It lies in the
middle of South Moravia and is a thriving centre of commerce and
culture. The city has a rich history and a wide variety of
architectural styles dating back almost a thousand years. Lying right
at the heart of Europe, Brno is well placed to attract visitors from
around the world. The city is a major trade fair centre, a grand prix
motorcycle venue, and is the home of six universities and a number of
research institutes.
The conference will be held at the Hotel International (which is a
member of the Best Western Premier network of hotels). The hotel is
located in a pleasant area of the city between the Cathedral of St.
Peter and Paul and the 13th century ©pilberk fortress. Parks
surrounding the fortress and cathedral provide a very convenient and
quiet walking area. Adjacent areas of the old city offer excellent
opportunities for shopping and a wide range of restaurants, pubs, and
bars. The conference hotel is reasonably priced and includes excellent
conference facilities.
Conference organizers can also provide details on how to book
accommodations in a nearby student hostel. It is located within 5-10
minutes walking distance from the conference hotel.
Brno has a growing international airport. There are regular train and
bus connections to large international airports at Prague and Vienna
(Austria). Detailed travel instructions will be placed on the
conference web site.
You can find more information about Brno at http://www.brno.cz/
and more about the hotel at http://www.hotelinternational.cz/
For more information, contact [log in to unmask]
Conference Organisers are:
Edmund Burke
Automated Scheduling, Optimisation and Planning Research Group
School of Computer Science and Information Technology
University of Nottingham
University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD
United Kingdom
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
and
Hana Rudová
Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University
Botanická 68a
Brno 602 00
Czech Republic
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
PATAT 2006 WEB SITE
Full updated information is always available from
http://patat06.muni.cz
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