Reducing Dependency on Prior Knowledge in Constraint Acquisition
Areski Himeur
PhD Thesis, LIRMM, University of Montpellier, 2025
PhD in Computer Science
Fixed-term Lecturer & Researcher
Areski Himeur
Currently teaching in the Telecommunications
Department of INSA
Lyon.
Conducting research in Chroma
team (INSA Lyon - INRIA).
Teaching
500+ hours of university and engineering school teaching experience in programming, algorithms, and AI.
Research
Conducting research at the intersection of optimisation and machine learning.
Selected Publications
Learning Compact Representations of Constraint Networks
Christian Bessiere, Clément Carbonnel, Areski
Himeur
ECAI 2025 - 28th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2025
Learning constraint networks over unknown constraint languages
Christian Bessiere, Clément Carbonnel, Areski
Himeur
IJCAI 2023 - 32nd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2023
Assessing the Impact of Agents in Weighted Bipolar Argumentation Frameworks
Areski Himeur, Bruno
Yun, Pierre Bisquert,
Madalina Croitoru
SGAI 2021 - 41st BCS SGAI International Conference on Innovative Techniques and Applications
of Artificial Intelligence, 2021
Experience & Education
Fixed-Term Lecturer and Researcher
INSA Lyon - Telecommunications Department
CITI - Chroma team (INSA Lyon - INRIA)
Teaching AI for Telecommunications, C programming, concurrency and system.
Research focusing on hybrid AI for robotics planning.
PhD in Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence
Supervised by Christian Bessiere and Clément Carbonnel.
LIRMM (CNRS - Univ. Montpellier)
Conducted research in constraint programming and machine learning while holding teaching positions across multiple institutions.
Manuscript title: Reducing Dependency on Prior
Knowledge in Constraint Acquisition.
Defended on December 3, 2025.
ATER (Temporary Teaching and Research Assistant)
Sept 2024 — Aug 2025
Faculty of Science - Montpellier
Taught DevOps, functional programming, and concurrency.
PhD Teaching Missions
Oct 2021 — Aug 2024
IUT Montpellier-Sète |
Faculty of Science - Montpellier-Sète |
Polytech Montpellier
Taught courses on algorithm complexity, fullstack development, and system programming.
Research Intern
LIRMM (CNRS - Univ. Montpellier)
Research on machine learning at the intersection of neural networks and constraint programming.
Master's Degree in Theoretical Computer Science
University of Montpellier
Algorithm design, AI, optimization, graph theory, complexity, and logic.
FIGURE Network Program Master Course of Engineering [CMI]
Part of the program integrating bachelor's and master's studies with a 20% increase in
course hours compared to standard degrees.
Fullstack Developer Intern
Hawk Platform
Developed a Golang API and React UI for a real-time auction monitoring tool. Implemented CI/CD with Gitlab CI and Docker.
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
University of Montpellier |
Mobility at the University of Helsinki
A semester of International Mobility at the University of Helsinki, Finland (Sept - Dec 2018).
Teaching Activities
I have accumulated over 500 hours of teaching experience across various institutions, ranging from first year undergraduate courses to master's level classes.
Teaching hours are converted into "equivalent to tutorials hours" (ETD for "Équivalent TD") - 1 hour of tutorials = 1 ETD, 1 hour of practical work = 2/3 ETD, and 1 hour of lecture = 1.5 ETD.
2025 - 2026
INSA LyonAI for Telecommunications
Master 1 - 4A38h ETD
Deep Learning (TensorFlow), Reinforcement Learning, Unsupervised Learning, and Transformers architecture.
Created all course materials.
System Architecture
Licence 3 - 3A29h ETD
Von Neumann model, instruction cycles, memory hierarchy, and assembly programming.
Parallel & Concurrent Prog.
Licence 3 - 3A11h ETD
Thread management, synchronization primitives (mutex, semaphores), and concurrency problems.
C Programming
Licence 3 - 3A20h ETD
Manual memory management, pointers, and low-level data structures (linked lists, binary trees).
Algorithmics
Licence 3 - 3A18h ETD
Complexity analysis, sorting algorithms, and data structures (stacks, trees).
Research Project
Licence 3 - 3A10h ETD
Supervised student projects in small teams.
Created the project subject.
2024 - 2025
Faculty of science - MontpellierIntro. to Object Modeling & Prog.
Licence 333h ETD
OOP concepts (encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism), UML diagrams, and Java implementation.
Multitasking Programming
Licence 333h ETD
Threads, mutexes, semaphores, signals, and inter-process communication (pipes).
Complexity & Computability
Licence 330h ETD
Turing machines, decidability, complexity classes, and reductions for NP-completeness proofs.
Software Engineering Workshop
PeiP 133h ETD
Version control (Git/GitFlow), CI/CD, dependency management (Maven), and containerization (Docker).
Functional Programming
Licence 133h ETD
Introduction to OCaml, recursion, algebraic data types, and higher-order functions.
Deterministic Automata
Licence 119.5h ETD
Finite automata, regular expressions, and determinization.
Professional Skills
Licence 39h ETD
Communication techniques (written and oral) for professional settings.
2023 - 2024
Polytech MontpellierMathematics for CS
Master 1 - 4A15h ETD
Graph theory (traversal, shortest paths, flows), polynomial reduction, and dynamic programming.
Created all course materials.
Advanced Algorithmics
Licence 3 - 3A24h ETD
Correctness proofs, asymptotic complexity analysis, and advanced data structures.
Created all course materials.
System & Development (Golang)
Licence 3 - 3A15h ETD
Go language, concurrency concepts (goroutines, channels), and system tool development.
Created all course materials.
Math Fundamentals
Master 2 - 5A11h ETD
Proof techniques, polynomial reduction and introduction to dynamic programming.
Created all course materials.
2022 - 2023
Faculty of science - MontpellierModeling & Object Programming 2
Licence 233h ETD
Advanced object concepts, Design Patterns, Generics, and exception handling.
Use of Computer Systems
Licence 1 - PeiP 130h ETD
OS basics (Linux), file management, scripting with Bash/Python, and basic sysadmin.
2021 - 2022
IUT Montpellier-SèteOS Principles
Licence 2 - DUT 228h ETD
Process management, scheduling, memory management, file systems, and Bash scripting.
Network Services
Licence 2 - DUT 212h ETD
Computer networks, OSI model, TCP/IP protocols, IP addressing, and routing.
Intro. to Systems & Arch.
Licence 1 - BUT 124h ETD
Use of operating systems (Linux) and computer architecture.