Bill Havens

Areas of interest

My research is concerned with developing Constraint Programming methodology for Intelligent Systems applications. The methodology includes constraint solving algorithms, systematic and heuristic search procedures, constraint optimization, belief propagation and multiagent systems. Our research group forms the SFU Intelligent Systems Laboratory .
Constraint Programming is an effective technology for solving real-world combinatorial problems in scheduling, planning and configuration. We are particularly interested in mixed-initiative reasoning systems which allow strong peer interaction between the intelligent system and the user of the system. My current research focuses on combining incremental constructive search methods and iterative repair methods in a unified multiagent architecture called Resolver. We are also interested in adapting bayesian propagation algorithms as heuristics for solving constraint satisfaction problems.

Education

• B.Sc. Electrical Eng., Va. Polytechnic Inst., 1969
• M.Sc. Electrical Eng., Va. Polytechnic Inst., 1973
• Ph.D. Computer Science, Univ. of British Columbia, 1978.