Featured Research " Computational Techniques for a Simple Theory of Conditional Preferences " Nic Wilson   " The Relationships Between Qualitative Notions of Optimality for Decision Making Under Logical Uncertainty " Nic Wilson and Conor O'Mahony

Overview of the Centre

Difficult problems can offer too many choices, many of which are incompatible, few of which are optimal. The Cork Constraint Computation Centre develops the basic science that will make it easier for computers to help us make these choices. We work with Irish and multinational industry to put our technology to practical use.

Constraints arise in design and configuration, planning and scheduling, diagnosis and testing, and in many other contexts. Constraint programming can solve problems in telecommunications, internet commerce, electronics, bioinformatics, transportation, network management, supply chain management, and many other fields.

The Cork Constraint Computation Centre (4C) was established at University College Cork with initial funding from Science Foundation Ireland in the form of a Principal Investigator Award to the Centre Director, Science Foundation Ireland Research Professor Eugene C. Freuder. 4C was formed when Professor Freuder moved his research lab from the University of New Hampshire in the U.S., in October of 2001, to merge with the UCC Department of Computer Science Constraint Processing Group, headed by Professor James Bowen.

Constraint programming already has wide commercial application, but much remains to be done to fully explore and exploit the technology. We apply advances in artificial intelligence and other disciplines to make constraint programming easier to use and more useful.