Pascal Van Hentenryck (born 8 March 1963) is the A. Russell Chandler III Chair and Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at

Georgia Tech The Georgia Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Georgia Tech or, in the state of Georgia, as Tech or The Institute, is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1885, it is part o ...

. He is credited with pioneering advances in

constraint programming Constraint programming (CP) is a paradigm for solving combinatorial problems that draws on a wide range of techniques from artificial intelligence, computer science, and operations research. In constraint programming, users declaratively state th ...

and

stochastic optimization Stochastic optimization (SO) methods are optimization methods that generate and use random variables. For stochastic problems, the random variables appear in the formulation of the optimization problem itself, which involves random objective fun ...

, bridging theory and practice to solve real-world problems across a range of domains including sports scheduling,

protein folding Protein folding is the physical process by which a protein chain is translated to its native three-dimensional structure, typically a "folded" conformation by which the protein becomes biologically functional. Via an expeditious and reprodu ...

, kidney matching,

disaster relief Emergency management or disaster management is the managerial function charged with creating the framework within which communities reduce vulnerability to hazards and cope with disasters. Emergency management, despite its name, does not actuall ...

power system An electric power system is a network of electrical components deployed to supply, transfer, and use electric power. An example of a power system is the electrical grid that provides power to homes and industries within an extended area. The e ...

recommender system A recommender system, or a recommendation system (sometimes replacing 'system' with a synonym such as platform or engine), is a subclass of information filtering system that provide suggestions for items that are most pertinent to a particular ...

s, and transportation. He has developed several optimization technologies including

CHIP Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) is a type of immunoprecipitation experimental technique used to investigate the interaction between proteins and DNA in the cell. It aims to determine whether specific proteins are associated with specific genom ...

, Numerica, the

Optimization Programming Language Optimization Programming Language (OPL) is an algebraic modeling language for mathematical optimization models, which makes the coding easier and shorter than with a general-purpose programming language. It is part of the CPLEX IBM ILOG CPLEX O ...

(OPL - now an IBM product), and

Comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or Coma (cometary), coma, and sometimes also a Comet ta ...

. He has also published several books, including Online Stochastic Combinatorial Optimization, Hybrid Optimization, and Constraint-Based Local Search. Van Hentenryck is an

AAAI The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is an international scientific society devoted to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public understanding of artif ...

and

INFORMS The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is an international society for practitioners in the fields of operations research (O.R.), management science, and analytics. It was established in 1995 with the merger of ...

fellow and has received numerous awards and honorary degrees for his contributions to

optimization Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criterion, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfi ...

and

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

Career

Pascal Van Hentenryck was born in Belgium and obtained his PhD in Computer Science from the

University of Namur A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...

in 1986. He joined Brown University’s Department of Computer Science in 1990 after spending four years at the European Computer-Industry Research Center where he led development of the CHIP system. In 1993, he was awarded an NSF National Young Investigator Award. Van Hentenryck spent the next several years at Brown developing new optimization technologies to address open problems in

vehicle routing The vehicle routing problem (VRP) is a combinatorial optimization and integer programming problem which asks "What is the optimal set of routes for a fleet of vehicles to traverse in order to deliver to a given set of customers?" It generalises t ...

, disaster relief, and power systems management. In 2009, Van Hentenryck co-founded Dynadec, a spin-off company based on optimization technologies he developed at Brown. In 2012, Van Hentenryck left Brown to lead the 70-person Optimization Research Group at

NICTA NICTA (formerly named National ICT Australia Ltd) was Australia's Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Research Centre of Excellence and is now known as CSIRO's Data61. The term "Centre of Excellence" is common marketing terminology u ...

in Australia until its merger with

CSIRO The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an Australian Government agency responsible for scientific research. CSIRO works with leading organisations around the world. From its headquarters in Canberra, CSIRO ...

in 2015. Van Hentenryck joined the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

in 2015. At Michigan, his work spanned several areas, including power systems, transportation, and

computational social science Computational social science is the academic sub-discipline concerned with computational approaches to the social sciences. This means that computers are used to model, simulate, and analyze social phenomena. Fields include computational economics ...

. In 2017, Van Hentenryck ran the Seth Bonder Data Science Summer Camp for High School Students. In 2018, he launched RITMO, a new transportation system for the University of Michigan’s campus. As of 2021, Van Hentenryck serves as the director of the NSF Artificial Intelligence Institute for Advances in Optimization (AI4OPT). Van Hentenryck has also taught a

Massive Open Online Course A massive open online course (MOOC ) or an open online course is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the Web. In addition to traditional course materials, such as filmed lectures, readings, and problem sets, ma ...

discrete optimization Discrete optimization is a branch of optimization in applied mathematics and computer science. Scope As opposed to continuous optimization, some or all of the variables used in a discrete mathematical program are restricted to be discrete var ...

Honors and awards

In 2002, Van Hentenryck received th
INFORMS ICS Award
for research excellence in optimizations research and computer science, and in 2004, he was awarded an IBM Faculty Award. In 2006, Van Hentenryck received th
ACP award for research excellence in Constraint Programming
In 2008, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the

University of Louvain A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...

, and in 2011, an honorary degree from the

University of Nantes The University of Nantes (french: Université de Nantes) is a public university located in the city of Nantes, France. In addition to the several campuses scattered in the city of Nantes, there are two satellite campuses located in Saint-Nazaire ...

. He has received several best paper awards including at CP ‘03, CP ‘04,

IJCAI The International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) is the leading conference in the field of Artificial Intelligence. The conference series has been organized by the nonprofit IJCAI Organization since 1969, making it the oldest pr ...

‘07, SEDE ‘09, AAAI ‘15, and CP ‘16. He has also received awards for outstanding contributions to teaching and education, including th
Philip J. Bray Award for Teaching Excellence in 2010 at Brown
and the 201
IFORS Distinguished Lecturer Award
He was elected to the 2016 class of

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

s of the

Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is an international society for practitioners in the fields of operations research (O.R.), management science, and analytics. It was established in 1995 with the merger of ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Van Hentenryck, Pascal 1963 births Living people Belgian computer scientists Brown University faculty Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Fellows of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences Georgia Tech faculty University of Michigan faculty Université de Namur alumni