Information Technology seminars

CRIS Seminar - The Modelling Language Zinc

Date and time:

30/07/2008, 14:00

Location:

Building: 26, Room: 135, Clayton Campus

Presenters:

Mr Reza Rafeh, PhD Student, Clayton School of Information Technology

Abstract:

Solving constraint decision problems, such as scheduling and timetabling, requires the given problem to be precisely formulated and efficiently solved. Recent approaches to solving constraint decision problems divide the task into two (hopefully simpler) steps. The first step is to develop the conceptual model of the problem which gives a declarative specification of the problem without consideration as to how to actually solve it. The second step is to solve the problem by mapping the conceptual model into an executable program called the design model.

Zinc is a new high-level modelling language which, on the one hand, makes the modelling easy specially for non-programmers, and on the other hand, maps each conceptual model to different design models using different techniques which allows modeller to experiment with different solving techniques and see which one is the most appropriate for the given problem

Speaker biographies:

Mr Rafeh joined Monash University in 2004 to undertake a PhD. His PhD project involves developing a new modelling language for constraint decision problems called Zinc. He has recently submitted his thesis. Before coming to Australia, Mr Rafeh had been working for a university in Iran as a lecturer. He has a B.Sc. and a M.Sc. in computer engineering (software) from Sharif University of Technology (Tehran, Iran).

He is particularly interested in constraint programming, modelling of combinatorial optimization problems and automatic theorem proving.

Enquiries:

Contact: Jeanette Niehus

Research group website:

http://www.infotech.monash.edu.au/research/centres/cris/index.html