Ian Gent is a British

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

working in the area of

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

and specialising in the area of constraint programming. He is a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

at the

University of St Andrews (Aien aristeuein) , motto_lang = grc , mottoeng = Ever to ExcelorEver to be the Best , established = , type = Public research university Ancient university , endowment ...

. He (along with

Toby Walsh Toby Walsh is a Laureate fellow, and professor of artificial intelligence in the UNSW School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales and Data61 (formerly NICTA). He has served as Scientific Director of NICTA, ...

) first wrote about the

phase transition In chemistry, thermodynamics, and other related fields, a phase transition (or phase change) is the physical process of transition between one state of a medium and another. Commonly the term is used to refer to changes among the basic states of ...

in many

NP complete In computational complexity theory, a problem is NP-complete when: # it is a problem for which the correctness of each solution can be verified quickly (namely, in polynomial time) and a brute-force search algorithm can find a solution by trying ...

problems, in particular

SAT The SAT ( ) is a standardized test widely used for college admissions in the United States. Since its debut in 1926, its name and scoring have changed several times; originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, it was later called the Schola ...

. He was also one of the first researchers to investigate full generic methods to handle

symmetry Symmetry (from grc, συμμετρία "agreement in dimensions, due proportion, arrangement") in everyday language refers to a sense of harmonious and beautiful proportion and balance. In mathematics, "symmetry" has a more precise definit ...

in constraint programming. Gent founded recomputation.org, to promote

reproducible Reproducibility, also known as replicability and repeatability, is a major principle underpinning the scientific method. For the findings of a study to be reproducible means that results obtained by an experiment or an observational study or in a ...

experiments in computer science. He was one of the founders of the csplib.org website, and popularised the

Petrie Multiplier The Petrie multiplier is a thought experiment or mathematical model invented by British computer scientist Karen Petrie, and first described by Ian Gent in 2013. The multiplier "shows that if the percentage of men and women in the room who make qu ...

. In January 2013 Gent founded the blog Depressed Academics with Mikael Vejdemo-Johansson.

References

External links

* * Living people Academics of the University of St Andrews British computer scientists Year of birth missing (living people) {{UK-compu-bio-stub