Prof. Dr. Malte Helmert

Prof. Dr. Malte Helmert
Address
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Spiegelgasse 1
CH - 4051 Basel, Switzerland
Room
06.004
Email
malte.helmert@unibas.ch
Phone
+41 61 207 05 48

Research interest

My main research interest is in intelligent problem solving, with a focus on the area of automated planning. Automated planning is the problem of finding a course of action that allows an intelligent agent to proceed from whatever situation they find themselves in to a situation which satisfies their goals. Or, as an esteemed colleague put it much more succinctly: "Planning is the art and practice of thinking before acting." Apart from planning, I am also interested in all kinds of combinatorial search and optimization problems, including constraint satisfaction and classical NP-hard graph problems.

Short bio

I received a diploma in computer science (comparable to M.Sc.) from the University of Freiburg in March 2001 and a Ph.D. from the same institution in June 2006. From April 2001 to May 2011, I was a member of the Research Group on the Foundations of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Freiburg, headed by Bernhard Nebel. In June 2011, I joined the University of Basel.

For more information, please consult my academic CV (PDF).

Software

Tutorials

Publications

All of my papers are available online.

Awards

  • ICAPS 2024 Influential Paper Award for the ICAPS 2014 paper LP-based Heuristics for Cost-optimal Planning (PDF) with Florian Pommerening, Gabriele Röger and Blai Bonet at the 34th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2024).
  • Best Paper Award for the paper Landmark Progression in Heuristic Search (PDF) with Clemens Büchner, Thomas Keller and Salomé Eriksson at the 33rd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2023).
  • Outstanding Program Committee Member Award at the 33rd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2023).
  • Runner Up, Best Student Paper Award for the paper Grounding Planning Tasks Using Tree Decompositions and Iterated Solving (PDF) with Augusto B. Corrêa, Markus Hecher, Davide Mario Longo, Florian Pommerening and Stefan Woltran at the 33rd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2023).
  • Fellow of Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (AAIA) .
  • SoCS 2022 Best Program Committee Member Award at the 15th International Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS 2022).
  • Outstanding Program Committee Member Award at the 32nd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2022).
  • Third Place, Best System Demonstration for the demo Unified Planning: A Python Library Making Planning Technology Accessible (PDF) with Andrea Micheli, Alexandre Arnold, Arthur Bit-Monnot, Luigi Bonassi, Luca Framba, Alfonso Gerevini, Selvakumar Hastham Sathiya Satchi, Félix Ingrand, Luca Iocchi, Uwe Köckemann, Oscar Lima, Fabio Patrizi, Federico Pecora, Guillaume Poveda, Gabriele Röger, Alessandro Saetti, Alessandro Saffiotti, Enrico Scala, Ivan Serina, Sebastian Stock, Florent Teichteil-Koenigsbuch, Alessandro Trapasso, Paolo Traverso and Alessandro Valentini at the 32nd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2022).
  • Best Student Paper Runner-Up Award for the paper Exploiting Cyclic Dependencies in Landmark Heuristics (PDF) with Clemens Büchner and Thomas Keller at the 31st International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2021).
  • AAAI Fellow at the 35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2021) for "significant contributions to the theory and practice of automated planning and combinatorial search".
  • ICAPS 2020 Influential Paper Award for the ICAPS 2009 paper Landmarks, Critical Paths and Abstractions: What's the Difference Anyway? (PDF) with Carmel Domshlak at the 30th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2020).
  • EurAI Fellow at the 24th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2020).
  • SoCS 2020 Best Paper Award for the paper An Atom-Centric Perspective on Stubborn Sets (PDF) with Gabriele Röger, Jendrik Seipp and Silvan Sievers at the 13th International Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS 2020).
  • ICAPS 2019 Best Paper Award for the paper Lagrangian Decomposition for Optimal Cost Partitioning (PDF) with Florian Pommerening, Gabriele Röger, Hadrien Cambazard, Louis-Martin Rousseau and Domenico Salvagnin at the 29th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2019).
  • ICAPS 2017 Best Student Paper Award for the paper Unsolvability Certificates for Classical Planning (PDF) with Salomé Eriksson and Gabriele Röger at the 27th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2017).
  • SoCS 2017 Best Paper Award for the paper Understanding the Search Behaviour of Greedy Best-First Search (PDF) with Manuel Heusner and Thomas Keller at the 10th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS 2017).
  • ICAPS 2016 Influental Paper Award for the ICAPS 2004 paper A Planning Heuristic Based on Causal Graph Analysis (PDF) at the 26th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2016).
  • ICAPS 2016 Outstanding Reviewer Award at the 26th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2016).
  • AAAI 2015 Outstanding Paper Award for the paper From Non-Negative to General Operator Cost Partitioning (PDF) with Florian Pommerening, Gabriele Röger and Jendrik Seipp at the 29th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2015).
  • Nomination for the Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching for the course Grundlagen der Künstlichen Intelligenz (Foundations of Artificial Intelligence) at University of Basel.
  • AAAI 2014 Outstanding Paper Award Honorable Mention for the paper Generalized Label Reduction for Merge-and-Shrink Heuristics (PDF) with Silvan Sievers and Martin Wehrle at the 28th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2014).
  • Outstanding Senior Program Committee Member Award at the 28th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2014).
  • ICAPS 2014 Outstanding Paper Award for the paper LP-based Heuristics for Cost-optimal Planning (PDF) with Florian Pommerening, Gabriele Röger and Blai Bonet at the 24th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2014).
  • Outstanding PC Member Award at the Twenty-Seventh AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2013).
  • ICAPS 2013 Best Paper Award for the paper The Relative Pruning Power of Strong Stubborn Sets and Expansion Core (PDF) with Martin Wehrle, Yusra Alkhazraji and Robert Mattmüller at the 23rd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2013).
  • ICAPS 2013 Best Student Paper Award for the paper Trial-based Heuristic Tree Search for Finite Horizon MDPs (PDF) with Thomas Keller at the 23rd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2013).
  • SoCS 2012 Best Student Paper Award for the paper Better Parameter-Free Anytime Search by Minimizing Time Between Solutions (PDF) with Jordan T. Thayer and J. Benton at the Fifth Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS 2012).
  • IJCAI 2011 Computers and Thought Award "for fundamental contributions to the theory and practice in automated planning and combinatorial search" at the Twenty-Second International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2011).
  • Winner, Deterministic Sequential Optimization Track for the planning system Fast Downward Stone Soup-1 (PDF) with Jörg Hoffmann, Erez Karpas, Emil Keyder, Raz Nissim, Silvia Richter, Gabriele Röger, Jendrik Seipp and Matthias Westphal at the 7th International Planning Competition (IPC 2011) at ICAPS 2011.
  • Runner-up ex-aequo, Deterministic Sequential Optimization Track for the planning system Merge and Shrink (PDF) with Raz Nissim and Jörg Hoffmann at the 7th International Planning Competition (IPC 2011) at ICAPS 2011.
  • Runner-up ex-aequo, Deterministic Sequential Optimization Track for the planning system Selective Max (PDF) with Erez Karpas, Carmel Domshlak and Shaul Markovitch at the 7th International Planning Competition (IPC 2011) at ICAPS 2011.
  • Winner, Sequential Satisficing Track for the planning system LAMA 2011 (PDF) with Silvia Richter, Matthias Westphal and Gabriele Röger at the 7th International Planning Competition (IPC 2011) at ICAPS 2011.
  • Runner-Up, Learning Track for the planning system Fast Downward Autotune-speed (PDF) with Chris Fawcett, Holger Hoos, Erez Karpas, Gabriele Röger and Jendrik Seipp at the 7th International Planning Competition (IPC 2011) at ICAPS 2011.
  • Runner-up, Deterministic Sequential Satisficing Track for the planning system Fast Downward Stone Soup (PDF) with Erez Karpas, Silvia Richter, Gabriele Röger and Jendrik Seipp at the 7th International Planning Competition (IPC 2011) at ICAPS 2011.
  • ECAI 2010 Best Paper Award for the paper Strengthening Landmark Heuristics via Hitting Sets (PDF) with Blai Bonet at the 19th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2010).
  • SoCS 2010 Best Poster Presentation Award for the paper High-Quality Policies for the Canadian Traveler's Problem (Extended Abstract) (PDF) with Patrick Eyerich and Thomas Keller at the Third Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS 2010).
  • ICAPS 2009 Best Paper Award for the paper Landmarks, Critical Paths and Abstractions: What's the Difference Anyway? (PDF) with Carmel Domshlak at the 19th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2009).
  • AAAI 2008 Outstanding Paper Award for the paper How Good is Almost Perfect? (PDF) with Gabriele Röger at the 23rd AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2008).
  • ICAPS Outstanding Dissertation Award Honorable Mention for the doctoral thesis Solving Planning Tasks in Theory and Practice at the Seventeenth International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2007).
  • ICAPS 2007 Best Research Paper Award for the paper Flexible Abstraction Heuristics for Optimal Sequential Planning (PDF) with Patrik Haslum and Jörg Hoffmann at the Seventeenth International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2007).
  • Outstanding PC Member Award Honorable Mention at the 22nd AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2007).
  • Lehrpreis des Landes Baden-Württemberg (state teaching award) for the organization of the Sommercampus event with Amir Alsbih, Niklas Deutschmann, Nico Dietrich, Nikolaus Ehrenfeuchter, Jochen Eisinger, Janis Fehr, Bernhard Nebel, Thomas Nunninger, Martin Preen, Anne Repky, Silvia Richter, Gabriele Röger, Sebastian Schulz, Alexander Scivos, Hendrik Tessendorf and Larissa Wißmann.
  • IJCAI-JAIR Best Paper Prize Honorable Mention for the paper The Fast Downward Planning System (PDF) at the Twenty-first International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2009).
  • ICAPS 2004 Best Student Paper Award for the paper A Planning Heuristic Based on Causal Graph Analysis (PDF) at the Fourteenth International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2004).
  • 1st Prize, Satisficing Propositional Track for the planning system Fast (Diagonally) Downward with Silvia Richter at the 4th International Planning Competition (IPC 2004) at ICAPS 2004.
  • PLANET Award for Research Excellence for the paper On the Complexity of Planning in Transportation Domains (PDF) at the 6th European Conference on Planning (ECP 2001).
  • VDI-Förderpreis (award of he Association of German Engineers) for the Diplomarbeit (Master's thesis equivalent) On the Complexity of Planning in Transportation and Manipulation Domains (PDF) .
  • Distinguished Planner Award for the planning system MIPS (PDF) with Stefan Edelkamp at the 2nd International Planning Competition (IPC 2000) at AIPS 2000.