Pascal Bercher

Biography#

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

Jan. 2022-today: (tenure-track) Senior Lecturer (US/Europe-equivalent: Associate Professor) at the ANU.
Nov. 2019-Dec. 2021: (tenure-track) Lecturer (US/Europe-equivalent: Assistant Professor) 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 and
Partial Order Causal Link (POCL) planning.

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.

Technology-wise, I’m interested in:

Computational Complexity Analysis
Algorithm and Heuristic Design
Providing Modeling Assistance

Teaching, Project, and PhD Supervision#

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

I’m the regular convenor of Logic (COMP2620/6262 and PHIL2080) since 2021.
In S2 2022, I’ll also convene Foundations of Computing (COMP1600/6260). Tutor applications for this course are now open! Please apply!.
I supervise several research projects each semester. You find a list of topics and several further information on my personal webpage (projects).
If you are looking for a PhD, please check out my personal webpage (prospective PhD students). If you want to do your PhD specifically under my supervisition, just approach me directly. If you are more open towards the specific topic you work on, please visit the planning group’s job announcement.

Service Roles#

I take multiple service roles at the ANU:

I’m a first Aider and mental first aider
I’m a member of CECS’s Work, Health, and Safety (WHS) committee
I’m an incident investigator
I’m a member of the SoCo PhD scholarship committee

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).

You can also find me on google scholar and DBLP.

Honours & Awards#

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

ICAPS Outstanding Senior Program Committee (SPC) Member Award 2022
Best Undergraduate Student Paper Award at ICAPS 2021 and 2022 (second of two authors)
AAAI Outstanding Program Committee (PC) Member Award in 2019 and 2021
ICAPS 2019 Best Dissertation Award
Best Student Paper Award at ICAPS 2018 (second of four authors)
Best Paper Award at ICTAI 2018 (third of four authors)

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.