CALL FOR PAPERS PATAT 2004 The 5th international conference on the Practice And Theory of Automated Timetabling Wednesday, 18th August - Friday, 20th August 2004 Sheraton Hotel Pittsburgh USA This conference is the fifth 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 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 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: Authors are invited to submit presentations in one of two categories: (a) Full Papers Authors should submit papers describing significant, original and unpublished work.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. 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 Abstracts of up to 1000 words in length (3-4 pages) can be submitted by those who wish to give a talk but do not want to write an academic paper. Abstracts will be fully refereed. The accepted ones will appear in the conference proceedings. 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). Submission Process: All submissions should be done through our online system available at http://mat.gsia.cmu.edu/PATAT04 (available September 1, 2003). Authors who cannot utilize the online system should contact one of the co-chairs of the Programme Committee for instructions. Deadlines: Paper/abstract submissions January 26th 2004 Notification April 30th 2004 (at the latest) Programme Committee: Edmund Burke (co-chair) University of Nottingham, UK Michael Trick (co-chair) Carnegie Mellon University, USA Jonathan Bard University of Texas, USA Viktor Bardadym Noveon Inc., Belgium Cynthia Barnhart MIT, USA Patrice Boizumault University of Caen, France Peter Brucker University of Osnabrueck, Germany Michael Carter University of Toronto, Canada David Corne University of Exeter, UK Peter Cowling University of Bradford, UK Patrick De Causmaecker KaHo St.-Lieven, Gent, Belgium Kathryn Dowsland Gower Optimal Algorithms Ltd. 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 Martin Henz National University of Singapore, Singapore Alain Hertz Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Canada Jeffrey Kingston University of Sydney, Australia Raymond Kwan University of Leeds, UK Gilbert Laporte HEC Montreal, Canada Vahid Lotfi University of Michigan-Flint, USA Anuj Mehrotra University of Miami, USA Amnon Meisels Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel George Nemhauser Georgia Institute of Technology, USA Thiruthlall Nepal Durban Institute of Technology, South Africa James Newall EventMap Ltd, UK Ben Paechter Napier University, Edinburgh, UK Gilles Pesant Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Canada Sanja Petrovic University of Nottingham, UK Andrea Schaerf Universita` di Udine, Italy Jan Schreuder University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands Stephen Smith Carnegie Mellon University, USA Jonathan Thompson Cardiff University, UK Paolo Toth University of Bologna, Italy 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: Pittsburgh has long shed its reputation as a town of soot and smog. Today, it is a vibrant city with a new wave of high-tech and service industries and architectural masterpieces. Intimate restaurants and high-energy clubs make Pittsburgh one of the "most livable" cities in the country. Pittsburgh boasts abundent shopping at great prices, world-class museums, symphony, ballet, opera, and a multitude of attractions. The conference will be held in one of Pittsburgh's most active areas. Lying just south of downtown, Station Square incorporates shopping, bars, restaurants, and clubs. Downtown is a short walk away across the river. Frequent river boats offer a unique view of Pittsburgh, and can even be used to get to Pittsburgh's sports venues. The conference hotel, the Sheraton Station Square, is at the heart of this area, and offers both affordable rates and outstanding conference facilities. Pittsurgh International Airport was ranked number one in the United States and number three in the world by Conde Nast Traveler and is a short 20 minute cab ride from Station Square. On the Saturday after the conference, we will organize outings to the beautiful Pennsylvania countryside. One group will head off to some of the best white-water rafting in the eastern seaboard. The Youghiogheny offers challenges to experienced rafters while not overwhelming the novice. A second group will head out to tour one of architect Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpieces "Fallingwater", a home through which a stream literally runs. The two groups will meet up for final conversation and dinner. You can find more information about Pittsburgh at http://www.visitpittsburgh.com/cvbonline/default.asp and more about the hotel at http://www.starwood.com/sheraton/search/hotel_detail.html?propertyID=693 For more information, contact: Prof E.K.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] or Prof M.Trick Graduate School of Industrial Administration Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA e-mail: [log in to unmask] PATAT 2004 WEB SITE Full updated information is always available from http://mat.gsia.cmu.edu/PATAT04