Logic and Search (Lash'12)

Recently, strong progress was made in various areas concerned with search problems. Such problems arise in virtually all application domains and branches of computer science. Fueled by the availability of powerful solver technologies developed in areas such as SAT, Constraint Programming, Integer Programming, ASP, SMT and others, several important developments take place. One trend is an exponentially growing diversification of the application fields of these solvers: system configuration, timetabling, job scheduling, planning, software and hardware verification, bioinformatics, music composition, etc. On the level of solvers, a trend is integration of technologies. Architectures are developed that allow to combine these technologies into flexible, configurable systems that solve much broader classes of problems more effectively. On the modeling level, we see the emergence of increasingly expressive modeling languages, as witnessed in Constraint Programming, SMT and ASP.

The goal of the LaSh workshops is to bring together researchers from all relevant areas to foster the exchange and development of ideas in both theory and practice of logic-based methods for combinatorial problem solving. LaSh is an occasion to discuss specific technical problems, formulate challenges and opportunities, compare and contrast techniques of different groups, and examine possible synergies and integrations. LaSh 2012 follows LaSh 2006, an ICLPLP workshop at FLoC 2006 (www.easychair.org/FLoC-06/LaSh.html), LaSh 2008, two day stand-alone workshop (www.cs.kuleuven.be/~dtai/LaSh08), and LaSh 2010, a satellite workshop of FloC 2010 and ICLP, Edinburgh, UK (http://logicandsearch.org/LaSh2010/web/Home.html).

We invite contributions to modeling languages, methodology, theory, algorithms and systems. To facilitate discussion of the most relevant current research, we welcome submission of previously-published research as well as new work.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• modeling languages and techniques
• logics
• modularity in languages and solvers
• solver design and implementation
• integration of solver technologies
• expressiveness and complexity
• algorithms for grounding and solving
• logics-based methods for optimization problems
• new applications
• system descriptions
• experimental evaluations

LaSh 2012 will feature invited talks, technical paper sessions, a special session on integration and modularity, a demo session, and a panel/open problem session.

Invited Speakers

Konstantin Korovin, University of Manchester, United Kingdom, " Recent Advances in Instantiation-Based First-Order Reasoning "

Leonardo de Moura, Microsoft Research, USA

Peter Baumgartner, NICTA, Australia, "Integrating Arithmetic into First-Order Theorem Proving - Still a Challenge"

Special session on system integration and theoretical and applied modularity aspects

Modularity is essential for modelling languages as it enables to master the description of complex systems and domains by splitting in smaller parts and composing descriptions of the whole domain from smaller independent components. Modularity issues are also essential in the implementation of systems. Model generators, model expanders, answer set programming systems, constraint systems, SMT solvers are developed for increasingly rich languages and include more and more different technologies from SAT, CP and ASP to handle specific language constructs. Integrating these technologies in one system and/or tuning the solver to use the appropriate technology for a set of expressions in a particular application is a challenging problem.

So far, these aspects have been given only limited attention. Not much work on this topic has been published. The goal of this special session is to begin to improve this situation.

Proceedings

The workshop proceedings will be informal and electronic.

Submissions

We welcome submissions of three kinds:

• Regular technical papers, presenting previously unpublished research;
• Short papers (system descriptions; work in progress; position papers);
• Presentation-only papers, presenting research that is highly relevant but which will have previously been presented elsewhere. (Authors may elect to have such papers excluded from the proceedings.)

At the time of submission, authors are requested to clearly specify whether their submission is new or previously published, by adding (New Work) or (Presentation Only) as an additional line in the paper title.

Each submissions will be reviewed by at least two members of the program committee.

Submissions may be in any common format, such as LNCS, AAAI and Easychair. We prefer that submissions not exceed the equivalent of 15 LNCS pages (5 pages for short papers). Authors should submit a PDF file via Easychair, at http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=lash2012

Important dates

• Paper Submission: 28 May, 2012
• Notification of Acceptance: 28 Jun, 2012
• Camera Ready Deadline: 6 August, 2012
• Workshop: 27 August, 2012

Conference organizers

• Marc Denecker, KU Leuven, Belgium
• Tomi Janhunen, Aalto University, Finland

Program committee

• Armin Biere, Johannes Kepler University
• Koen Claessen, Chalmers University of Technology
• Adnan Darwiche, University of California, Los Angeles
• Leonardo de Moura, Microsoft
• Thomas Eiter, Vienna University of Technology
• Wolfgang Faber, University of Calabria
• Alan Frisch, University of York
• Enrico Giunchiglia, University of Genova
• Daniel LeBerre, Universite d'Artois
• Ines Lynce, Instituto Superior Técnico Lisboa
• Pierre Marquis, Universite d'Artois
• Tony Mancini, Sapienza Universita di Roma
• David Mitchell, Simon Fraser University
• Albert Oliveras, Technical University of Catalonia
• Barry O'Sullivan, University College Cork
• Jussi Rintanen, Australian National University
• Torsten Schaub, Universitat Potsdam
• Eugenia Ternovska, Simon Fraser University
• Mirek Truszczynski, University of Kentucky
• Emina Torlak, University of California, Berkeley
• Victor Marek, University of Kentucky
• Toby Walsh, University of New South Wales