Jon Sneyers

Contact info

Snail mail:: Jon Sneyers
Dept. Computer Science, K .U.Leuven
Celestijnenlaan 200A
B-3001 Heverlee (Leuven)
Belgium
Room:: 200A 01.167 (old numbering: 01.171; older numbering: 01.05)
previous room: 200A 01.175 (= old number; older numbering: 01.46; new number 01.168)
Email:: jon.sneyers (at) cs.kuleuven.be
Phone:: +32 16 327666
Fax:: +32 16 327996
Website:: www.cs.kuleuven.be/~jon (this page)

Research

In August 2004 I started working aa a PhD student in the Analysis (Design, Analysis and Implementation of Declarative Programming Languages) subgroup of the DTAI (Declarative Languages and Artificial Intelligence) research group of the Department of Computer Science at the K.U.Leuven (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven). Since January 2006, I am supported by the IWT (Institute for the Promotion of Innovation by Science and Technology in Flanders).

My PhD subject was "Optimizing Compilation and Computational Complexity of Constraint Handling Rules Constraint Handling Rules" and my supervisor was Bart Demoen. Together with Tom Schrijvers and my supervisor, I have been developing the K.U.Leuven CHR system and investigated its time and space complexity properties, in theory and in practice. I have defended my PhD on the 24th of November, 2008. Other people in our group are also working on CHR or using it: Peter Van Weert made the KULeuven JCHR system, Paolo Pilozzi and Dean Voets work on termination for CHR, Leslie De Koninck is currently working at NICTA in Australia.

My research interests are:

Implementation, analysis, and optimization of declarative languages, in particular Constraint Handling Rules (CHR) and other (Constraint) Logic programming languages
Automata theory, complexity theory
(Algorithmic) graph theory
Automatic music generation and classification
Rule-based probabilistic logic learning

Currently I am developing the CHRiSM system. One of its applications is APopCALeaPs, an automatic music generator.

Some of my recent publications:

Frank Raiser and Jon Sneyers, editors. Proceedings of the sixth international workshop on Constraint Handling Rules. Technical report CW 555, K.U.Leuven, Department of Computer Science, July 2009. [report CW555] [PDF]
Jon Sneyers. Rechtspositie en Loonvoorwaarden van Doctoraatsbursalen. T.O.R.B. (Tijdschrift voor Onderwijsrecht en Onderwijsbeleid) 2008-2009, nr. 5, p.353-361, mei-juni 2009. Draft: [PDF]
Jon Sneyers, Peter Van Weert, Tom Schrijvers and Leslie De Koninck. As Time Goes By: Constraint Handling Rules — A Survey of CHR Research from 1998 to 2007. Theory and Practice of Logic Programming, 2009. To appear. Draft: [PostScript] [PDF]
Jon Sneyers, Tom Schrijvers and Bart Demoen. The Computational Power and Complexity of Constraint Handling Rules. ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), Vol. 31(2), February 2009. [PDF]

All publications

Teaching

Ik gaf de oefenzittingen bij het vak Fundamenten voor de Informatica (FVI) van 2004 tot 2007. Meer informatie is te vinden op Toledo en op de pagina van FVI (gedateerd).
Samen met Wannes Meert gaf ik van 2007 tot 2009 de oefenzittingen bij het vak Modellering van Complexe Systemen.
Thesisstudenten waarvan ik begeleider was:
- Jochen Drijkoningen (promotor: Danny De Schreye) : "De automatische componist: Muziek maken met JMusic en cellulaire automaten" (2009)
- Alexander Carpentier en Eric Lebrun (promotor: Danny De Schreye) : "Automatische structuuranalyse, classificatie en generatie van muziek" (2006)
- Vincent Penesich (promotor: Danny De Schreye) : "Een regelgebaseerd probabilistisch model voor automatische compositie van hedendaagse muziek" (2005)

Politics

I'm a member of the Linkse Socialistische Partij (LSP, Left Socialist Party / PSL Parti Socialiste de Lutte) which is the Belgian section of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI), an international Trotskyist organisation. LSP has an anti-racist/anti-fascist campaign (Blokbuster) and a student organization (ALS, Actief Linkse Studenten). I have also participated in Comité voor een Andere Politiek (CAP).

Marxist archives: Marxist.net (English) and Marxisme.net (Dutch).
Why Socialism? by Albert Einstein (1949).
Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project, has some interesting political notes.
Satire: het vrije leven is voor iedereen, Echt socialisme!, ABC van het socialisme.
Politieke (visuele) humor en een liedje en nog een liedje en nog een liedje

Music

I enjoy playing (and listening to others play) the piano, especially the works of Beethoven [1], [2]. I also like to improvise [mp3]. In February 2009 I finally managed to write down some of the themes that originated in improvisations. The result is a little composition called Pianofortis [pdf] [lilypond,midi). Here is a recording (with some additional improvisation when the score ends), and here is an edited version (with some sound effects applied) of the same recording. Here are some more improvisations: #1 and #2, or with wahwah: #1 and #2. I'm sorry if it all sounds very repetitive and boring. In March 2009 I wrote three little political protest songs (in Dutch): Moderne partijen, 't Kapitalisme is kapot, and Druppels op een hete plaat.

Between 1995 and 2002 I used SoundTracker or similar programs to create horrible music, mostly based on themes I discovered while improvising. Some examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 [xm], 7 [s3m], 8, 9, 10 [it]. After a long delay, at the end of 2006 I made another tune called "Revolution Now". And in April 2008 I made this one.

Finally, I used to sing (bass) in the Winakoor, which was the choir of the Math, Physics and Informatics student club Wina.