Research Excellence Award

Ten years after the first CP conference, the CP research area was mature enough to begin to identify and honour the most influential people in the field. In 2015, the Executive Committee of the Association for Constraint Programming has decided to establish an annual "ACP award for Research Excellence in constraint programming", whose purpose is to celebrate those CP researchers who have made exceptional and very influential research contributions to CP with their work.

The award, in the form of a certificate, is presented at the CP conference, where the winning researcher will be invited to give a plenary talk. The award includes free registration for the conference.

At the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the CP conference, an exciting series of podcast-style interviews with the awardees has been made: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcByDTr7vRTb9PrlY7RVgb9S0wnNyu3MW

The past recipients of this award are as follows:

Year Recipient Nominated by
2023 Mats Carlsson Nicolas Beldiceanu, Pierre Flener, Mikael Zayenz Lagerkvist, Justin Pearson and Magnus Rattfeldt
2021 John Hooker Pascal Van Hentenryck and Willem-Jan van Hoeve
2019 Peter James Stuckey Christian Schulte
2017 Nicolas Beldiceanu Mats Carlsson, Pierre Flener, Pascal Van Hentenryck
2015 Toby Walsh Christian Bessiere
2013 Jean-Charles Regin Michel Rueher, Laurent Perron, Pierre Schaus
2011 Patrick Prosser Ian Gent, Barbara Smith, Toby Walsh
2009 Alan Mackworth Eugene C. Freuder
2008 Alain Colmerauer Frederic Benhamou
2007 Rina Dechter Javier Larrosa
2006 Pascal Van Hentenryck Laurent Michel
2005 Eugene C. Freuder ACP EC