Welcome

I am a University College Cork Emeritus Professor of Computer Science, and remain affiliated with the Irish Insight centre. However, I am now based in the U.S., in Cambridge, MA, and have an appointment as an Associate of the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. 

I was honored to receive the IJCAI Research Excellence Award in 2020. My IJCAI 2020 Research Excellence Award talk can be viewed here. I am the President of the recently formed Artificial Intelligence Scientific Organizations Coordinating Council.

I served as a Councilor of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and on the AAAI 2025 Presidential Panel on the Future of AI Research. I currently serve on the AAAI Council’s Conference Committee and chair the AAAI President’s Fellows Advisory Board. 

I have recently co-organized AAAI Conference “Bridges” on Constraint Programming and Machine Learning. I am also co-editing a JAIR Special Track on Constraint Programming and Machine Learning. 

This website provides some brief biographical information, an overview of my research, and a short introduction to my field of Constraint Programming. It also serves as a home for a series of workshops on Progress Towards the Holy Grail, a conference anniversary volume I’ve edited, and some of my thoughts on oral presentation. The header image is not of a Penrose or Escher staircase, but of the main atrium in Harvard’s Science and Engineering Complex. You will also find here some links to sources of further information, and finally occasional Blog entries. All of this is very much a work in progress.

Among the types of posts you may find in the Blog:

  • Citations: Brief “shout outs” to recent papers citing my work
  • Ideas: Research ideas or other thoughts that might (or might not) be worth pursuing
  • Mentoring: In particular, tips related to my tutorials on “How to Be a Ph.D. Student” and “Presenting a Paper”
  • News: Occasional news about my activities, Constraint Programming and Artificial Intelligence
  • Papers: A look back at my old papers, with an eye to current relevance