After a successful series of five international workshops (Ferrara, Paderborn, Ashford, Le Croisic, and Montreal) and five international conferences (Nice, Prague, Cork, Brussels, and Paris), the sixth international conference on Integration of Artificial Intelligence and Operations Research techniques in Constraint Programming for Combinatorial Optimization Problems will be held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (USA), May 27-31, 2009.

The aim of the conference is to bring together interested researchers from constraint programming (CP), artificial intelligence (AI) and operations research (OR) to present new techniques or new applications in combinatorial optimization and to provide an opportunity for researchers in one area to learn about techniques in the others. A main objective of this conference series is also to give these researchers the opportunity to show how the integration of techniques from different fields can lead to interesting results on large and complex problems. Therefore papers that actively combine, integrate, or contrast approaches from more than one of the areas are especially solicited. High quality papers from a single area are also welcome, provided that they are of interest to other communities involved. Finally, application papers showcasing CP/AI/OR techniques on innovative and challenging applications or experience reports on such applications are strongly encouraged.

CP-AI-OR'09 will be preceded by a day of workshops, and a two-day Master Class where leading researchers give introductory and overview talks. The Master Class is intended for PhD students, researchers, and practitioners.

The program committee invites submissions that include but are not limited to the following topics:

1. Relaxation methods, e.g. constraint propagation, cutting planes, global constraints, graph algorithms, dynamic programming, Lagrangean and convex relaxations, heuristic functions based on constraint relaxation.
2. Search methods, e.g. branch and bound, intelligent backtracking, incomplete search, randomized search, column generation and other decomposition methods, local search, meta-heuristics.
3. Integration methods, e.g. static/dynamic problem decomposition, solver communication, transformations between models and solvers, collaboration between concurrent methods, models, and solvers.
4. Modeling methods, e.g., comparison of models, symmetry breaking, uncertainty, dominance relationships.
5. Innovative Applications of CP/AI/OR techniques.
6. Implementation of CP/AI/OR techniques and Optimization Systems.
   

PAPER/ABSTRACT SUBMISSION

Paper submissions are of two types: Full papers and extended abstracts.

Full papers should present original unpublished work and be at most 15 pages in length, and should be prepared in the format used for the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science series (http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html). These papers will undergo rigorous review. The proceedings will be published in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. All papers are to be submitted electronically in a PDF or PS format by following the instructions at the URL http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cpaior2009.

Extended abstracts should be 1 or 2 pages in length and may present preliminary work or work already published in other outlets. The extended abstracts will be published in the conference volume, and must be prepared using the same format as full papers. A submission representing work submitted or published in another outlet should state that outlet. Extended abstracts will be reviewed to ensure appropriateness for the conference.

Conference presentations will be either long (20 to 30 minute) presentations, short (15 to 20 minute) presentations, or poster presentations. We expect most extended abstracts to be short or poster presentations.