Video summary (IJCAI20 early career spotlight):
Associate professor at the KU Leuven (KU Leuven, Belgium)
- member of the Leuven.AI institute
- secretary of the executive committee of the ACP
- member of the ECMLPKDD steering committee
- ERC Consolidator Grant CHAT-Opt
My research focusses on the integration of machine learning and constrained optimisation. The aim is to make constraint solving more human-aware by learning from the daily operational environment and its users.
My awesome team
- Jayanta Mandi, PostDoc @ KUL
- Maxime Mulamba, PhD @ VUB&KUL
- Ignace Bleukx, PhD @ KUL
- Senne Berden, PhD @ KUL
- Bastian Vejar, PhD @ KUL
- Dimos Tsouros, PostDoc @ KUL
- Irfan Mahmutogullari, PostDoc @ KUL
- Wout Vanroose, Dev @ KUL
- Marco Foschini, PhD @ KUL
- Helene Verhaeghe, PostDoc @ KUL
- Kostis Michailidis, PhD @ KUL
- Thomas Sergeys, PhD @ KUL
Former Visitors
- Mattia Silvestri, PhD @ UniBo, 2022
Former members
- Emilio Gamba, now at Flanders Make, Belgium
- Jo Devriendt, now a freelancer, Belgium
- Marjolein Deryck, now at KU Leuven, Belgium
- Rocs Canoy, now a freelancer, Belgium
- Lize Coenen, now at UAntwerpen, Belgium
- Victor Bucarey, now at Univ de O'higgings, Chile
- Sheida Hadavi, now at ANU, Australia
Highlights
- PostDoc position and visitor places available! Contact me by email if curious about joining the team!
- Our Sudoku Assistant Android App won the AAAI 2023 Best Demo award! Try it on Google Play
- Invited talk video: Learning from user and environment in combinatorial optimisation, at the 2023 IPAM AI & Discrete Optimisation workshop
- Intro talk on Constraint Programming & CPMpy, video, code
- ERC Consolidator grant 2021-2026 CHAT-Opt: Conversational Human-aware Technology for Optimisation
Updates
- JFPC/Caviar 2024 keynote: Learning constraints, objectives and entire models Slides Youtube video
- CPAIOR 2024 keynote: Decision-Focused Learning: Foundations, State of Art, Benchmarking & Opportunities Slides Youtube video
- near-published survey paper Decision-focused learning: Foundations, state of the art, benchmark and future opportunities preprint PDF
- ACP Winter School 2024: Lecture on "Explainable constraint Programming" Slides PDF Slides Notebook Code Youtube video
- AAAI 2024: Paper Learning to Learn in Interactive Constraint Acquisition: combining ML with symbolic constraint learning, with Dimos Tsouros and Senne Berden PDF Code
- C&OR journal on our Amazon Last Mile routing approach, an extension of our 'Learn-and-route' work: Probability estimation and structured output prediction for learning preferences in last mile delivery PDF
- DSAA 2024: Paper Electricity Price Forecasting based on Order Books: a differentiable optimization approach, nice novel application of DFL in the electricity domain, as part of a novel approach to predict order books and then solve the Euphemia balancing algorithm to get the expected price. Nice collaboration with Léonard Tschora, Erwan Pierre, Marc Plantevit and Céline Robardet PDF
- Math+ TES 2023 summer school talk "From data to decisions: Combinatorial optimisation with learned inputs slides
- JAIR journal Efficiently explaining CSPs with unsatisfiable subset optimization, the most detailed description of our optimal unsatisfiable subset work and how to use it for step-wise explanation sequences PDF
- CP 2023:
- Paper Simplifying Step-wise Explanation Sequences, to improve explainable constraint solving. PDF code
- Paper Guided Bottom-Up Interactive Constraint Acquisition, more scalable acquisition and with out-of-the-box solvers (in CPMpy of course). PDF code
- Tutorial Explainable Constraint Solving - A Hands-On Tutorial, slides code
- Workshop invited talk Integrating Constraint Programming with Machine Learning and Explanation: The Sudoku Assistant App, at the PTHG workshop Slides
- Workshop talk Holy Grail 2.0: From Natural Language to Constraint Models with Dimos Tsouros, Hélène Verhaeghe and Serdar Kadıoğlu, at the PTHG workshop
- Workshop talks Things we underestimated while developing the CPMpy constraint modelling library and Breaking Constraint Modelling Languages with Metamorphic Testing (extended abstract) at the ModRef workshop Slides
- Constraints journal paper Learn and route: learning implicit preferences for vehicle routing with Rocs Canoy, Victur Bucarey and Jayanta Mandi PDF
- We hosted the ACP Summer School 2023 in Leuven on the theme of Machine Learning for Constraint Solving, with 92 particpants! All video's available on the ACP YouTube channel.
- Invited talk Learning from user and environment in combinatorial optimisation at the IPAM 2023 Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Discrete Optimization
- AAAI 2023:
- We are participating at the CPML Bridge with no less then 3 talks: on Learning constraint models from data, on Constraint solving for Prediction + Optimisation problems and on the CPMpy modeling library
- Beste Demo Award! for our Sudoku AI Assistant that combines machine learning and constraint solving techniques, to cleverly assist in solving pen-and-paper sudoku's.
- Invited talk at the Data Science platform of the University of Vienna: Learning from User and Environment in Combinatorial Optimisation Slides
- ICML 2022: Paper Predict and Optimize: Through the Lens of Learning to Rank which shows that learning-to-rank losses and techniques can be re-purposed, and our related to existing losses, for decision-focussed learning! paper, slides
- AI and 5G? Yes, nice multidisciplinary collaboration with Politecnico di Milano, TU Eindhoven and TU Delft: Baseband-Function Placement with Multi-Task Traffic Prediction for 5G Radio Access Networks in IEEE Trans. on Network and Service Mgmt (2022) PDF
- JFPC/PFIA 2022: Honoured to give the JFPC invited talk on Learning and Reasoning with Constraint Solving and the role of CPMpy to enable it! Slides
- Two journal papers on ML approaches to credit scoring finally published: Machine learning methods for short-term probability of default: A comparison of classification, regression and ranking methods and Cost-sensitive learning for profit-driven credit scoring and related: Learning to Rank for Uplift Modeling
- CPAIOR 2022
- Lecture on Perception- and Preference-based Constraint Solving at the super exciting masterclass on Bridging the Gap between Machine Learning and Optimization, organized by Adam Elmachtoub and Elias Khalis. Slides
- Paper Model-Based Algorithm Configuration with Adaptive Capping and Prior Distributions where we explore learning priors to speed up algorithm configuration, for example for use in CPMpy. PDF Code
- ECMLPKDD 2022: priviliged to be co-program chair! Turns out it involves lots of data crunching to do right, see our program chair scripts repository.
- CP 2022
- Paper Learning Constraint Programming Models from Data using Generate-and-Aggregate, the paper resulting from our participation to the constraint learning holy grail challenge last year. Using CPMpy of course. PDF Code (TBD)
- Paper Learning MAX-SAT Models from Examples using Genetic Algorithms and Knowledge Compilation resulting from now-PhD Senne Berden's master thesis. PDF Code
- IJCAI 2022
- Online seminar at GERAD, HEC Montreal: "Learning and Reasoning with Constraint Solving" slides
- CP 2021
- Paper Data Driven VRP: A Neural Network Model to Learn Hidden Preferences for VRP, challenged by very limited data but nice results with domain-specific architectures and loss functions; with Jayanta Mandi, Rocs Canoy and Victor Bucarey PDF video code
- We won the PTHG-21 Constraint Acquisition Challenge! Grammar-based constraint learning, great collaboration with Mohit Kumar and Samuel Kolb, paper in preparation challenge video challenge report
- Doctoral Program panelist on 'Presenting your work' video
- Position paper at the ModRef workshop on CCPCPPAPI, the need for a Common CP C++ API
- CPMpy tutorial first screenings, now also on youtube
- IJCAI 2021
- Paper Contrastive Losses and Solution Caching for Predict-and-Optimize, scales very well thanks to novel caching, with Maxime Mulamba, Jayanta Mandi, Michelangelo Diligenti, Michele Lombardi and Victor Bucarey PDF video code
- Paper Efficiently Explaining CSPs with Unsatisfiable Subset Optimization optimal MUSs, with meta-constraints and incrementality with Emilio Gamba and Bart Bogaerts PDF video
- Workshop Data Science meets Optimisation, UPDATE: with special issue
- Invited talk slides: on Prediction + Optimisation at (virtual) Toronto, and on Learning from user and env. in combinatorial optimisation at (virtual) IRISA Rennes and a slightly updated version of Prediction+Optimisation at the (virtual) CAP21 conference
- AAAI 2021: Knowledge Refactoring for Inductive Program Synthesis, combining CP and program induction, nice collaboration with Sebastijan Dumancic (KU Leuven) and Andrew Cropper (Oxford) PDF
- Leuven.AI JRE Keynote "Tips for a succesful PhD, and how to win an award with it" watch the video!
- NeurIPS 2020, super proud to have our paper Interior Point Solving for LP-based prediction+optimisation with my PhD student Jayanta Mandi accepted! PDF summary video code
- Summer school lectures on pinciples of data science [Video] and Learning form user and environment in combinatorial optimisation [Video] now available online!
Also includes hands-on material for image recognition + sudoku solving exercise.- IJCAI 2020
- Honored to be selected for an 'Early Career Spotlight' talk, with video!
- Co-organizing workshop on Data Science meets Optimisation, deadline 30 October
- DSAA 2020: accepted paper on Probability of Default Estimation with a Reject Option with PhD students Lize Coenen and Ahmed KA Abdullah, DOI
- CPAIOR 2020: wonderful paper on Hybrid Classification and Reasoning for Image-based Constraint Solving, a nice collaboration with my PhD students Maxime Mulamba, Jayanta Mandi and Rocs Canoy PDF code
- EJOR journal paper Using Shared Sell-through Data to Forecast Wholesaler Demand in Multi-echelon Supply Chains with Jente van Belle and colleague Wouter Verbeke DOI
- AIJ special issue on Combining Constraint Solving with Mining and Learning! 16 awesome articles, edited with Andrea Passerini and Guido Tack
- Zorgt Waze voor meer sluipverkeer? Men Universiteit van Vlaanderen filmpje met Waze als voorbeeld van de voordelen en valkuilen van artificiele intelligentie