Pascal Bercher

Associate Professor and ARC DECRA Fellow

Picture of Pascal Bercher

Location
Hanna Neumann Building 145, Office 3.36

Email
pascal.bercher@anu.edu.au

Phone
+61 2 6125 0322

Clusters
Intelligent Systems
Computing Foundations

Research Students
Daniel Lutalo
Mohammad Yousefi
Nader Karimi Bavandpour
Pascal Lauer
Yifan Zhang

Website
https://bercher.net

Publications
ORCiD
dblp
Google Scholar

ANU Research Profile
pascal-bercher

Biography

If you want to learn more about me, my personal website presents my entire academic CV.

  • Jan. 2025-today: (tenured) Associate Professor at the ANU.
  • Jan. 2022-2024: (tenure-track) Senior Lecturer at the ANU.
  • Nov. 2019-Dec. 2021: (tenure-track) Lecturer at the ANU.
  • Oct. 2016-Oct. 2019: Project coordinator (over the entire runtime) of the technology transfer project “Do it yourself, but not alone: Companion-Technology for Home Improvement”, which was a collaboration between two Institutes of Ulm University and the Corporate Research Sector of Robert Bosch GmbH.
  • July 2009-Dec. 2017: Dr. rer. nat. at the Institute of Artificial Intelligence of Ulm University, Germany. My supervisor was Prof. Dr. Susanne Biundo-Stephan.
  • Oct. 2003-June 2009: Studies of Computer Science (Diploma, which is roughly Bachelor + Master in one degree) at the University of Freiburg, Germany.

Research

My research area is Artificial Intelligence (AI) Planning, also often referred to as Automated Planning. More specifically, I’m an expert for the following planning areas:

  • Hierarchical Task Network (HTN) planning,
  • Partial Order Causal Link (POCL) planning,
  • classical planning (but mostly the first two).

The first is a hierarchical approach to planning that bases upon problem decomposition refining an abstract problem until it’s “primitive” and thus solved. (I also created a website for this discipline.) The second is concerned with reasoning about partially ordered sets of actions, and the last about linear action sequences.

Technology-wise, I’m interested in:

  • Computational Complexity Analysis
  • Algorithm and Heuristic Design
  • Providing Modeling Assistance

All these three lines of research are applied to all three planning paradigms mentioned above.

Teaching, Project, and PhD Supervision

This is just an excerpt of my teaching activities. For a complete list, visit my personal webpage (teaching).

  • Coursework:
    • In 2027 S1, I will teach COMP3630/COMP6363, Theory of Computation.
    • In 2027 S2, I will teach COMP4691/COMP8691, Optimisation.
    • To see which courses I convened in the past, please check out my personal webpage (ANU courses).
  • Looking for undergraduate research projects?
    • I supervise several research projects each semester. You find a list of topics and several further information on my personal webpage (projects). Note however that due to high teaching and supervisory load I will likely not take any more students; or at least a very low number. So, please don’t be disappointed if I can’t make myself available.
    • If you are still looking for a research project (even if not with me), you might want to check out my personal webpage (projects), where I give advice on how to find a supervisor.
  • Looking for a PhD or Master?
    • I do not have any open positions. But maybe I can help you find another position… How? By providing a few helpful links and other advice. Check out my personal webpage (prospective PhD students).
    • Both on this page here as well as on my linked private webpage I make clear that I don’t have any capacities. Hence, any requests which ask out of the sky – thus proving that you did not read any of my webpages – for PhD or Master positions will be ignored without a reply. Every other enquiry will of course be receive an answer from me.

Service Roles

I take multiple service roles at the ANU:

  • I’m a member of the SOCO recognition and elevation committee (REC). Their job is to make sure SOCO members apply for appropriate awards to receive the recognition they deserve.
  • I’m a member of CSS’s Work, Health, and Safety (WHS) committee.
  • I’m a First Aider and Mental Health First Aider.
  • I’m an incident investigator.

For a more detailed list, visit my personal webpage (service).

Publications

I publish quite a bit, please find all my publications (with bibtex and PDFs) on my personal webpage (publications). If you dive deep enough into my comprehensive webpage, you also find sections listing my favorite papers and those with my most favorite paper titles. :)

You can also find me on google scholar and DBLP.

Honours & Awards

I list the most important award below. For a complete list visit my personal webpage (awards).

  • Distinctions:
    • Keynote at ICAPS 2026
    • AAAI Senior Member (since 2026)
    • ANU CSS Excellence in Supervision Award 2025
    • Invited talk (New Faculty Highlights Program) at AAAI 2021
  • Research Awards:
    • ICAPS 2026 Best Student Paper ward (last of four authors)
    • SoCS 2024 Best Student Paper ward (last of three authors)
    • Winner of 5 of 6 tracks on HTN Planning of the International Planning Competition (IPC) 2023 at ICAPS 2023. (I did not participate in the sixth track.)
    • ICAPS 2022 Best Undergraduate Student Paper Award (second/last author)
    • ICAPS 2021 Best Undergraduate Student Paper Award (second/last author)
    • ICAPS 2019 Best Dissertation Award
    • ICAPS 2018 Best Student Paper Award (second of four authors)
    • ICTAI 2018 Best Paper Award (third of four authors)
  • Best reviewer Awards:
    • AAMAS 2026 Distinguished Senior Program Committee Member 2026
    • ECAI Outstanding Program Committee (PC) Member Award 2025
    • ECAI Outstanding Program Committee (PC) Member Award 2024
    • ICAPS Outstanding Senior Program Committee (SPC) Member Award 2022
    • AAAI Outstanding Program Committee (PC) Member Award 2021
    • AAAI Outstanding Program Committee (PC) Member Award 2019
    • Theoretical Computer Science journal (year omitted to remain anonymity)

Note that ICAPS is the premier conference for Planning and Scheduling, and ranked A* by CORE. Likewise, AAAI is one of two top-tier conferences for AI in general, and also ranked A* by CORE. ICTAI is ranked B and a large platform for AI research as well.

What can somehow be regarded an award: I was awarded the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA), making me an ARC DECRA Fellow (from April 2024 to April 2027). This is a research project, which funds, among others, two PhD students who will, with me and under my supervision, work on a research project I developed. This research focuses on modeling support for Automated Planning. The following is the publicly available abstract of the funded proposal:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) planning technology is used to control systems like automated factories, robots, or to solve complex optimisation problems. Creating these models is however rather complex and error-prone and requires experts to create them in the first place. This project aims at developing techniques and tools for automated modelling support. They will make the modelling process easier and guarantee desired model properties such as the desired system behaviour. The tools will thus contribute towards making the technology more easily accessible to companies that might want to deploy them, while reducing costs for doing so and increasing the quality of these models.

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