Gopal Gupta and I.V. Ramakvishman

Inspired by the success of the European Network of Excellence in Computational Logic, logic programming researchers in North America have formed a similar organization called COMPULOG Americas. While started by logic programming researchers in North America, COMPULOG Americas, as its name suggests, hopes to involve researchers from both North and South Americas.

COMPULOG Americas aims to serve as a forum where users, researchers and developers of logic programming (LP) systems and techniques can come together for common good. The organization aims to:

(i) Underscore the important role of LP

in computer science and carve out a larger role for LP in mainstream computing in Americas.

(ii) foster better communication among LP research groups, LP related companies, and LP users in the Americas

(iii) Disseminate information about LP and LP related activities.

(iv) Organize area meetings, workshops, and summer schools etc.

The discussion for forming such an organization has been on-going for a while. In almost every ALP meeting (held during ICLPs and ILPSs), the need for an organization that will look after interests of logic programming in the Americas has been discussed.

These meetings inspired Ken Bowen of ALS, Inc., to create the "Logic Programming in North America" web pages (http://www.als.com/nalp. html). COMPULOG Americas can be seen as a follow-up to these efforts. A meeting of North American Logic Programming researchers was convened during the Joint International Conference and Symposium on Logic Programming held at Bonn in September 1996, where the foundation of this organization was laid. Subsequently, considerable discussion took place over email before COMPULOG Americas was finally created (transcripts of this discussion can be found at http://www.cs.engr.uky.edu/~marek/opinions.html). As a first step,web pages have been created (www.cs.nmsu. edu/~complog), an advisory board formed, and several area-coordinators appointed.

The advisory board and the various area-coordinators, will help in governing and in deciding policy issues.

The advisory board consists of:

Jacques Cohen,

Saumya Debray,

Victor Marek,

Jack Minker,

Raghu Ramakrishnan,

David Scott Warren, and

Maarten van Emden.

The chief coordinators of COMPULOG Americas are

Gopal Gupta (gupta@cs.nmsu.edu) and I.V. Ramakrishnan (ram@cs.sunysb.edu).

Currently, the area coordinators are as follows:

Knowledge Representation: Mirek Truszczynksi;

Parallel and Implementation Technologies: Enrico Pontelli and Gopal Gupta;

Concurrency and Constraints: Pascal Van Hentenryck;

Languages: Bharat Jayaraman and I.V. Ramakrishnan;

Automated Deduction and LP: Maria Paola Bonacina;

Natural Language Processing: Veronica Dahl; and,

Applications: Terrence Swift and Rupert Hopkins.

Coordinators for other areas are still being appointed.

A principal aim of COMPULOG Americas is to push logic programming into main stream computer science. For one reason or the other, it seems that logic programming has a public relations problem, especially in the States. In the mind of many people, Logic programming is synonymous with the Japanese Fifth Generation Project. Most people (rightly or wrongly) perceive the Japanese Fifth Generation Project as a failure, which then is inferred as the failure of the logic programming technology. Consequently, Logic programming is perceived by many people as an experiment that was tried in the 80s and that didn't work. An average computer scientist is not aware of contributions and new technologies that have come out of logic programming in the last 20 years, nor is (s)he aware of its potential. It is this negative image that has been conjured up for LP in Academia, Industry, and Government Agencies in the Americas that the COMPULOG Americas wishes to change through its efforts.

Gopal Gupta & I.V. Ramakrishnan

gupta@cs.nmsu.edu ram@cs.sunysb.edu