Guillaume studies ‘constraint satisfaction problems’. Can constraints within a given set of variables all be fulfilled? The field has many applications, from logic games like Sudoku to the scheduling of sport leagues. Some constraint problems can be very hard, requiring the use of expertly-built solver programs. Guillaume looks at particularly difficult constraint satisfaction problems, to identify what they have in common. His work seeks to find a widely applicable approach to hard constraint problems in general. His team has developed a measure that evaluates the occurrence of a specific behavior (called completability) of constraint satisfaction problems and has shown that the lower the completability, the harder the problem. They believe that their measure will improve the general understanding of constraint satisfaction and in time lead to even more efficients ways of solving such problems.
Guillaume Escamocher obtained his PhD in 2014 from the University of Toulouse, France where he worked on constraint satisfaction problems under the supervision of Professor Martin Cooper. In the same year, he joined Professor Barry O’Sullivan’s research team as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, University College Cork, Ireland, where he continues to work.
His main topic of interest is constraint problems, where he likes to generate different kinds of instances to study their properties. This helps researchers in achieving a better understanding of constraint problems, which in turn helps in improving the performance of constraint solvers. He has also adapted constraint paradigms to other fields, like stable matching.
Research profile link: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Guillaume-Escamocher
