Group history
The group has a long history, going back over 30 years. It began as a logic group in the Department of Philosophy in the Research School of Social Sciences (RSSS), became an automated reasoning project associated with the (now defunct) Centre for Information Science Reserch (CISR), helped to form the Research School of Information Sciences and Engineering (RSISE) and ultimately merged with the Computer Sciences Laboratory. The Computer Sciences Laboratory became part of the School of Computer Science in the ANU College of Engineering & Computer Science.
1973-1986
In RSSS, the logic group gradually became distinct from the rest of the Philosophy department. Key figures were Richard Routley (later Sylvan) and Bob Meyer. The group was world-leading in relevant logic and pioneered what is now called substructural logic. Important publications include Routley's Exploring Meinong's Jungle (1979) and the first volume of Relevant Logics and their Rivals (1982) by Routley, Meyer, Val Plumwood and Ross Brady.
1986-1994
RSSS eventually set up a 5-year "Automated Reasoning Project" and housed it in "I Block" in the Old Administration Area. Meyer joined the project, but Sylvan did not. After 1991, it was maintained by the Centre for Information Science Research. The group's work in classical theorem proving dates from this period, as does the Logic Summer School. Key people: Michael McRobbie, Bob Meyer, Paul Thistlewaite, John Slaney.
1994-1999
The Automated Reasoning Project was reborn as a founding department of RSISE, which moved into its present building 1996. John Slaney, Greg Restall, Raj Gore, Matthias Fuchs and Jen Davoren (in that chronological order) shaped its research agenda. As a department, it remained small and struggled constantly to survive. Besides continued work in nonclassical logic and theorem proving, the research field expanded towards software engineering and AI.
1999-2003
In 1999 the Computer Sciences Laboratory absorbed the machine learning and automated reasoning groups, which were then able to stabilise and expand. The automated reasoning group attained once more the size of the old RSSS project. Kata Bimbo, Sylvie Thiébaux, Yannick Pencolé and Tomasz Kowalski were recruited during this time. Research areas now included AI planning, model-based diagnosis and the logic of hybrid systems.
2003-
NICTA arrived in 2002 and began recruiting researchers in 2003. NICTA's Logic and Computation Program was built around the RSISE group. The work in planning and diagnosis was split off, as Thiébaux and Pencolé joined the Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Program. The logic group has more than doubled in size since the advent of NICTA, and now works more intensively in verification and in constraint programming than it could before.
