AVISPA: A research group who have no doubt that research in

AVISPA: A research group who have no doubt that research
in Computer Science is possible in Colombia (draft)
Mauricio Toro Bermudez
October 31, 2009
1
The beginning: the AVISPA project (1995-1999)
AVISPA1 is a colombian research group created at the end of 1995 to pursue a dream.
Their dream was to conduct research on the state-of-the-art of visual languages among
multiple institutions in the world. In addition, they wanted to facilitate the access to the
field of computer programming to all kinds of users, not necessary computer scientists.
The group was created by Prof. Camilo Rueda from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana
Cali (PUJC), Prof. Juan F. Dı́az from Universidad del Valle (Univalle) and Dr. Gérard
Assayag from the French Acoustics/Music Research Institute (IRCAM). In addition, it
was supported from its beginning by Dr. Frank Valencia and Dr. Luis Omar Quesada,
who were B.Sc. students at PUJC back then. AVISPA was the first research group at
PUJC being financially supported by the Colombian Agency for Science and Technology
Development (Colciencias). PUJC, Univalle and IRCAM still work on the AVISPA on our
days.
Figure 1: The first logo used by AVISPA.
Their first project was also called AVISPA. The first generation of students (fig. 2)
joined the group during this project: Germán Castaño, Mario Valencia, Antal Buss and
Mauricio Heredia from PUJC, and Sandra Gil, Luis Mulato and Dr. Néstor Cataño
from Univalle. Luis O. and Frank, who were already working in AVISPA before the first
1
Acronym in spanish for visual environments of applicative programming.
1
project, participated as well. In addition, Gabriel Tamura from PUJC, Silvia Takahashi
and Olga Marino from Universidad de los Andes, and Dr. Gloria I. Álvarez from Universidad Autónoma de Manizales worked on this project as researchers.
Figure 2: A few members of AVISPA on 1995. From left to right: ??, Camilo Rueda,
Frank Valencia ,Luis O. Quesada, ??, ???.
The AVISPA project had two components: a theoretical one –the PiCO calculus– and
the practical side –Cordial, a visual programming language based on PiCO. PiCO is a
process calculus that brings together the power of Milner’s Pi-Calculus, Object Oriented
Programming and Constraint Programming.
Another part of the project was developed in collaboration with the IRCAM. Camilo,
Gérard and Dr. Carlos Agón developed OpenMusic. Today, OpenMusic is perhaps the
most popular software for Computer Assisted Composition. Camilo also worked with
Antoine Bonnet in the development of Situation. Situation is a software for automated
generation of music, based on Constraint Programming.
Frank and Germán also contributed to the development of Situation. They wrote a
B.Sc. thesis (supervised by Camilo) where they developed an algorithm called AC6++.
That algorithm was better than the one considered optimal for arc-consistency (a technique used in constraint propagation). They published their work on the Latinoamerican
Congress for Studies in Computer Science (CLEI) 1996 and they also worked on the implementation of their algorithm, which is still used in Situation.
Later in 1997, the group turned towards a different direction. Luis O., Frank, Juan
F. and Camilo found out a way to integrate the Pi-Calculus and Saraswat’s Concurrent
Constraint Programming (CCP). They developed Pi+ and they submitted a paper, which
was chosen as one of the best papers in CLEI 1997. Frank and Luis O. presented their
work at the conference. It was the first time that the group sent research assistants to
present an article in an international conference.
A few years later, the group presented some ideas about virtual education in International Conference about education, technology and innovation (ETC) 1999 (fig. 3).
Today, AVISPA’s members impart several master and doctorate virtual courses at PUJC
and Univalle. Process calculi became one of the main research interests of the group; they
2
have developed multiple process calculi to model a variety of real-life phenomena.
Visual Programming has not been forgotten. In 2002, AVISPA developed a graphical
interface for a software for scheduling named Pathos. In 2004, Daniela Fernández and
Leonardo Quintero developed VIN, a graphical interface for an interpreter of an Avispa’s
process calculus. Recently, in 2008, Camilo, Gérard, Carlos Agón and Mauricio ToroBermudez developed Gelisp, a library to represent graphically Constraint Satisfaction
Problems on OpenMusic using the constraint solving library Gecode.
Figure 3: ETC’99. From left to right: a representant from “Secretarı́a de Educación”, a
representant from “Fundación para la Educación Superior (FES)”, Juan F. Dı́az, Madanmohan Rao, Camilo Rueda, Rosario Ramirez de Quesada, John Tiffin and Luis O. Quesada.
2
Extending the areas of application (2000-2005)
After successfully concluding the AVISPA project, the group continued with the research
in computer music, but they also worked on other applications: the PATHOS project, a
joint work between the academia and the productive sector; the VISIR project, a joint
work with a colombian energy company (EPSA); and the CRISOL project, a joint work
with the Software Development Center of Cali (ParqueSoft). All of these projects had
something in common: they were related to Constraint Programming.
According to Luis O., these projects gave AVISPA’s young members a great opportunity to get familiar with Mozart/Oz, get in touch with its developers and find opportunities
of doing our Ph.D. studies. Many results of these projects were presented on the Second
International Mozart/Oz Conference MOZ 2004, where the AVISPA’s young researchers
got to know researchers from all the world in the field they were working.
PICTURE!
3
2.1
PATHOS
PATHOS2 started on October 1999 with the purpose of automatizing the timetable of
classrooms, professors and schedules at PUJC. This project was an initiative of Camilo
and Juan F. Shortly after the propose was approved, Luis O. joined this project. Their
first prototype took four days to find a solution to the problem. At the end of the project
in 2002, their program could find solutions in a few minutes.
In August 2000, during the prototyping phase, two new students joined: Catherine
Garcı́a from PUJC and Jhon Alexander Vargas from Univalle –who were both supervised
by Gabriel Tamura. During the software product phase, in 2001, more students joined:
Janeth Rodrı́guez, Diana Torres, Mayra Sacanamboy and Alejandro Forero from Univalle,
and Gustavo Pabón from Javeriana. The task of Gustavo was critical: to continue the
work that Luis O., who was going to start his doctorate in Europe on 2000.
During this project, there were also developments on Visual Programming. Sandra
Cetina, developed an editor for PATHOS based on the model proposed for Cordial (an
application developed during the AVISPA project).
At the end of this project, in 2002, the PATHOS software was able to work with
constraints involving the availability of classrooms, professors and courses at PUJC.
In 2002, Gustabo Pabón and Sandra Cetina (in collaboration with the researchers of
the PATHOS project) created an enterprise called Leading INnovations on Constraint Empowered Technologies (LINCES-Tech) that continued with the development of PATHOS as
a commercial software project. Their developments were based on the PATHOS project.
Today, they have a software called ORION, which provides a similar functionality to
PATHOS, but it is based on a different computational approach. Pathos also evolved to
DePathos, a software project created during the CRISOL project.
2.2
VISIR
VISIR3 was also a project involving constraint programming and optimization. The purpose was to help a colombian dam to take decisions of how much water and when should
the water be spilled; minimizing the water spilled (which may cause natural damages) and
optimizing profits. This project started on ???? and finished on november 2001.
This project was developed by Juan F., Camilo, Gustavo, Luis O., Sandra Cetina and
some engineers from EPSA. The Research group of Computer-Science Doctorate Studies
(GEDI) participated during this project as well. The implementation was made using
the Concurrent Constraint Programming paradigm under the Mozart/OZ programming
language. Mozart/Oz made the implementation easier and more efficient than using other
programming languages available at that time.
This project was very important because if the decision of spilling the water was not
made “wisely”, many cities close to the river would be destroyed. In addition, it was
important to minimize the amount of water spilled. As usual in AVISPA, they created a
very good graphical interface that was used by the engineers of EPSA to parametrize the
software developed.
2.3
CRISOL
Shortly after, on november 2002, the Constraints Research and Innovation for Software
Leverage (CRISOL) project... to be continued ...
2
3
Acronym in Spanish for “automated programming of courses, schedules and classrooms”.
Acronym in “Spanish for Intelligent software for spilling of water in risk situations”
4
3
Towards a declarative formalism for concurrency: The
NTCC calculus (2002 - 2006)
Perhaps COCOS goes here... does it? Which projects were developed during this time?
4
Opening their doors to the world: GeOz, FORCES and
REACT (2006- 2009)
5
The future of AVISPA: ??? (2010 - )
React-plus.. Forces? Something else?
5