1998 - 1999 CS Annual Report                                                        Researchers
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Carla Gomes 

Research Associate 
gomes@cs.cornell.edu 
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/gomes 

Ph.D. Univ. of Edinburgh, 1993

My research interests are centered around the integration of methods from artificial intelligence and operations
research for applications in planning and scheduling, and, more generally, multidisciplinary approaches for solving
combinatorial problems. Recently, I have focused on randomized search techniques. In this work, I study so-called heavy-tailed distributions that characterize complete randomized search methods. A promising way of
exploiting heavy-tailed behavior is by combining a suite of search methods into a portfolio, running on a distributed
compute cluster. It can be shown that such portfolios dramatically reduce the expected overall computational cost, thereby allowing us to solve large, previously unsolved planning and equipment grant, we are constructing a 30 node parallel compute cluster with a high-speed communication network to further evaluate and study our algorithm portfolio approach. 

Professional Activities 
  • Guest Editor: Knowledge Engineering Review, Cambridge Press 
  • Editorial Board: Knowledge Engineering Review 
  • Program Committee Member: Agents '99, European Conference on Planning 
  • Member: DARPA Information Science and Technology Study Group on Probabilistic Methods in Computational Systems and Infrastructure 
  • Organizer: New World Vistas AFOSR Annual Review  
  • Program Committee: Abstract State Machine Workshop (ASM2000) 
  • Reviewer: Journal of Automated Reasoning, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research,
    Constraints: An International Journal, IEEE Expert 
Lectures 
  • Integration of artificial intelligence and operations research techniques for planning and scheduling (tutorial). AAAI99, Orlando, FL, July 1999  
  • Heavy-tailed behavior in combinatorial search. CS Seminar Series, Univ. of Alberta, Canada, June 1999  
  • Dynamic strategies for hybrid search spaces. New World Vistas AFOSR Principal Investigator Meeting, Minnowbrook, NY, May 1999  
  • Heavy-tail phenomena in computational problems. AI Seminar Series, Computer Science, Cornell Univ., May 1999  
  • Algorithm portfolio approach for solving hard combinatorial problems. Conf. Inst. for
    Operations Research and Managements Science (INFORMS99), Cincinnati, OH, Apr. 1999
  • Speeding up search by exploiting randomization. Center for Discrete Mathematics and
    Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS), Sept. 1998  
  • Exploiting heavy-tailed phenomena to speed up search. CS Seminar, Syracuse Univ., July, 1998 
Publications 
  • Heavy-tailed phenomena in satisfiability and constraint satisfaction problems. Journal
    of Automated Reasoning     22 (1999) (with B. Selman, N. Crato)  
  • Integration of search methods from artificial intelligence and operations research. Knowledge Engineering Review 14 (1999) 
  • Heavy-tailed distributions in computational methods. Proc. Applications of Heavy Tailed
    Distributions in Economics, Engineering, and Statistics    (1999) (with B. Selman)  
  • Boosting combinatorial search through randomization. Proc. of the 15th Natl. Conf. on
    Artificial Intelligence (AAAI98)     (1998) (with H. Kautz and B. Selman) 
  • Operations research in scheduling: Opportunities for integration with AI. Proc. of Planning as Combinatorial Search (part of AIPS98) (June 1998)  
  • Randomization in backtrack search: Exploiting heavy-tailed profiles for solving hard
    scheduling problems. Proc. of the 4th Int. Conf. on Artificial Intelligence  Planning Systems (AIPS98) (June 1998), 208-213 (with K. McAloon and C. Tretkoff)